A TROUBLED PAST: RECONFIGURING POSTWAR SUBURBAN AMERICAN

IDENTITY IN REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, 1961 AND MAD MEN, 2007-2012

by
Erin M. Kiley

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida
December 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express sincerest thanks to Dr. Julieann Ulin, who
helped to shape this project from its inception, and who also allowed me to work on a
topic about which I was passionate. She read through many, many revisions, and I
simply could not have reached this point without her wise words and encouraging
feedback. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Swanstrom for her support and
encouragement, not just in regard to this project, but in regard to assisting me in the
development of my pedagogical practices as well. I would like to thank Dr. Robert
Adams for being a continual source of support and inspiration throughout my
undergraduate and graduate careers, as well as for his help with this project in particular.
I would also like to express my gratitude to all of the English Department faculty
members who encouraged me and guided me throughout my endeavors in this program.
Finally, I would like to express thanks to Mary Sheffield, my graduate advisor, for her
constant willingness to provide assistance with navigating this entire process, as well as
for her support, her patience, and her ever-present kindness.

iii

ABSTRACT
Author:

Erin M. Kiley

Title:

A Troubled Past: Reconfiguring Postwar Suburban American

Identity in Revolutionary Road, 1961 and Mad Men, 2007-2012

Institution:

Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor:

Dr. Julieann Ulin

Degree:

Master of Arts

Year:

2013

This thesis takes a cultural studies approach to representations of post-war U.S.

suburbia in Richard Yates 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, as well as in the
contemporary AMC television series Mad Men. These texts explore the postwar time
period, which holds a persistently prominent and idealized space in the collective cultural
imagination of America, despite the fact that it was a period troubled by isolationism,
containment culture, rampant consumerism, and extreme pressure to conform to social
roles. This project disrupts the romantic narrative of postwar America by focusing on the
latent anxiety within the suburban landscapeby interrogating the performative nature of
the planned communities of the 1950s and 1960s and exposing the tensions that were
borne out of the rise of domesticity and consumerism. This project explores the descent
into a society obsessed with consumerism and conformity, and seeks to interrogate the
cultures false nostalgia for the time period.
iv

DEDICATION
This manuscript is dedicated to my selfless and loving husband, Jason, who is
always willing to do whatever he can to help me achieve my goals, and who has a
seemingly effortless ability to discover the tiniest beam of light, even in the darkest of
spaces. Thank you for always pushing me to look for the light.

A TROUBLED PAST: RECONFIGURING POSTWAR SUBURBAN AMERICAN

IDENTITY IN REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, 1961 AND MAD MEN, 2007-2012

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
The Petrified Forest: The Tension Between Performance, Identity, and Reality in
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road ................................................................................. 19

The Revolution Will Be Advertised: Mad Men and the Commodification of a

Culture............................................................................................................................... 46

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 80
Works Consulted ............................................................................................................... 84

INTRODUCTION
The lie of the ideal is of course merely the truth of the masters....is it any wonder that the lie fascinates
the minds of men, twisting them to fit its laws until their contortions come to resemble natural
human postures? And it is true that man lies because in a world governed by lies he cannot do
otherwise: he is falsehood himself, he is trapped in his own falsehood.
--Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, 1967

The period of American history that immediately followed the end of World War
II marked a distinct cultural shift in American society as a whole. The postwar society
was largely characterized by a move from diversely populated cities into the
homogenized, standardized suburbs, as well as by a shift in emphasis on the nuclear
family as the ideal image of American life. The move to the suburbs was also coupled
with an increased emphasis on consumerism, as material objects such as cars, houses,
appliances, and various other goods became symbols for prosperity, success, and
happiness, and as such became a critical aspect of creating the illusion of idyllic suburban
existence. The period is distinct also with regard to the infiltration and influence of mass
media, particularly in the form of television, which began to have a strong influence on
American culture, and became a vehicle for advertising and marketing ideas that put
utmost value on the new, and therefore marked the beginning of an era where image
began to become more powerful than reality. Cultural theorist Fredric Jameson has
written extensively on the Postmodern era and its relationship to the transition into a
modern, or in his words, late capitalism, in which culture itself becomes a vehicle for
the promotion of consumption above all else. Jameson describes the anxiety intrinsic to

this transition into a new consumer society in Postmodernism and Consumer Society:
At some point following World War II a new kind of society began to
emergeNew types of consumption; planned obsolescence; an ever more
rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes; the penetration of
advertising, television and the media generally to a hitherto unparalleled
degree throughout society; the replacement of the old tension between city
and countryby the suburb and by universal standardizationthese are
some of the features which would seem to mark a radical break with that
older prewar society in which high modernism was still an underground
force. (1974)
We see here that the post-WWII society represented such an extreme difference from the
society before the war that it is viewed as a period that must be conceptualized separately
from what preceded it. For Jameson, the tension created by the suburb and universal
standardization is indicative of a shift in culture where art, literature, and the
architecture of the time period have become unable to exist as a subversive or
underground force, in the ways that high modernism was once able to exist. In other
words, the cultural products of the postwar time period cannot escape the fact that they
are produced by the established status quo, and they are therefore rendered unable to
disrupt or expose that establishment. Hence, in the absence of subversive elements,
society is incapable of successfully resisting conformity and standardization, a fact that
creates a fundamental feeling of unease and dissatisfaction at being forced to comply
with strict social standards. The tension created by the standardized suburbs, as well as
the images generated through the consumption of mass media are evident in cultural

productions that focus on the postwar time periodproductions that seem to begin to
question the idea that American life is capable of producing a meaningful existence at all.
Again, Jameson points to this sinking, mysterious air of unease at the mundane
insignificance of everyday existence during the postwar era as it even pervades the more
artistic productions of the era:
Here too the content seems somehow to contaminate the formthe misery
of happiness, or at least contentment (which is in reality complacency), of
Marcuses false happiness, the gratifications of the new car, the TV
dinner, and your favorite program on the sofawhich are now themselves
a misery, an unhappiness that doesnt know its namehas no way of
telling itself apart from genuine satisfaction and fulfillment since it has
presumably never encountered this last. (Postmodernism 280).
So for Jameson, the movement toward the typical suburban life marked by consumerism
and complacency numbs the inhabitants of that life by lulling them into a false happiness
that robs them of the ability to resist oppressive or repressive structures. Here we see
the problem with no name (57) of Betty Friedans Feminine Mystique extended to
encompass not just the women of the era, but rather every person who has become
seduced by an all-encompassing consumer society that repeatedly convinces them that
they are, or at least should be, happy. Indeed if they are not, it is not because they have
ceased to live a meaningful existence, but rather that they must need to engage in more
consumptionbuy a newer car, a newer house, a newer appliance, in order to attempt to
fulfill the unhappiness that doesnt know its name. In other words, in a society where
happiness is dictated by how well one fits into the images perpetuated by the media, a

creeping feeling of unhappiness and dissatisfaction breeds fear and anxiety rather than a
true recognition of the reasons for that dissatisfaction. If one is constantly told that if
they conform to an image they will be satisfied, yet he or she never reaches that point of
satisfaction, they move toward the internal in an attempt to locate the problem, rather
than pushing against repressive ideologies that may be the actual cause.
Hence, this thesis, A Troubled Past: Re-configuring Postwar Suburban American
Identity, explores these themes by taking a cultural studies approach to representations
of post-war U.S. suburbia in Richard Yates 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, a novel that
has recently experienced somewhat of a re-birth after a film version was produced in
2009, as well as the contemporary AMC television series Mad Men, which has aired from
2007-present. These texts explore the postwar time period, which, as noted, holds a
persistently prominent and idealized space in the collective cultural imagination of
America, despite the fact that it was a period troubled by excessive isolationism bred by
Cold War paranoia and containment culture, as well as rampant consumerism, extreme
pressure to conform to strict social roles, and the outright oppression of women and
minority groups.
Nostalgia for the postwar era seems to be a persistent impulse in American
cultural productions, despite the fact that for marginalized groups, the era was decidedly
less than idyllic. Still, the idealized or romanticized postwar period consistently serves as
fodder for literature, television, and film, and seems to maintain a consistent presence in
the rhetoric of politicians who wish to wax poetic about the good old days, which in
fact never existed the way they do in these selective portions of the American
imagination. Cultural historian Stephanie Coontz has written extensively on re

evaluating our collective nostalgia regarding the 1950s. In one of her historical studies,
The Way We Never Were: The American Family and the Nostalgia Trap, Coontz
destabilizes and reconfigures the vision of the families of the past by showing us that the
idea of the nuclear family is a relatively new one, as is the focus on suburban life, our
obsession with consumption, and even the seemingly traditional image of woman as
homemaker. Coontz sheds light on the fictions that we have created, which seem to
conceal the truth about the time period. The postwar era evokes romantic nostalgia on a
national level to the point that is not remembered for its injustices, anxieties, and
tensions, but is rather idealized as a time of innocence and wealtha golden age for the
American family. Coontz also points to the so-called containment culture of the 1950s as
a mechanism for the creation of extreme repression, anxiety, and a feeling of entrapment
within the relative isolation of suburban communities and American families:
Families in the 1950s were products of even more direct repression. Cold
War anxieties merged with concerns about the expanded centrality of
family life and the commercial world to create what one authority calls the
domestic version of George F. Kennans containment policyA normal
family and vigilant mother became the front line of defense against
treason; anticommunists linked deviant family or sexual behavior to
sedition. (63)
In other words, any deviation from what was considered to be the normal family was
deemed not just strange, but could be grounds for accusations of treason. Conformity to
the established norm, the ideal suburban family life, was of utmost importance. Hence,
the performative nature of suburban existence was heightened immensely. Maintaining

appearances was necessary not just to avoid gossip, but it was considered an issue of
national security.
Jameson also addresses the containment culture of the suburban landscape as the
starting point of a continuum of identical products and standardized spaces that has
carried on into our contemporary culture:
One has the feelingthat the autonomy of the small townalso
functioned as an allegorical expression for the situation of Eisenhower
America in the outside world as a wholesecure in the sense of its radical
difference from other populations and cultures, insulated from their
vicissitudes and from the flaws of human naturein their violent and
alien histories (Postmodernism 281).
Here we see that the spaces that existed outside of the large city centers were areas that
became symbolic of the broader cultural desire to insulate and protect oneself from the
unpredictable and unknown. The suburbs ostensibly provided a homogenized, sheltered
space in which one could feel safe from the vicissitudes of reality. The word alien
here is crucial because it signifies the fear of the unknown external elements that
suburban existence purported to keep out. The suburban landscape ultimately creates a
crisis for its inhabitants because of its obsession with homogeneity and isolation, so that
its residents are forced to conform, or else pretend that they conform with the established
status quo so that they do not arouse suspicion. Hence, the suburbs do not breed
contentment and community, but instead foster an environment of paranoia, isolation, and
anxiety.

Both Revolutionary Road and Mad Men make attempts at troubling an idealized
portrait of postwar America by exposing the highly performative and suffocating nature
of existence in suburban spaces. Though Revolutionary Road dates from 1961 and Mad
Men is contemporary, a combined analysis of the two is beneficial for a number of
reasons. For one, in the mainstream press, Revolutionary Road and Mad Men are often
linked, especially since the debut of the 2009 film version of Revolutionary Road. In
fact, many in the press have asserted that the novel Revolutionary Road was an
inspiration for Mad Men: an article in the UK newspaper The Telegraph entitled Mad
Men: The Most Literary Show on Television, claims that Weiner even handed the novel
out to the cast in order to familiarize them with the social background of the time period
(Walton).1 The article also reinforces the inclination to read Mad Men as literary text, as
it insists that the themes that pervade the series are also present throughout American
literature: More importantly, within those celebrated sixties trappings, this is a television
show thats always concerned with, and sometimes explicitly refers to, several recurring
and timeless themes in American Literature (Walton). The scholarly reaction to the
series Mad Men has therefore been extremely pronounced.2 Cultural critics and scholars

According to the popular website, Internet Movie Database, Mad Men creator Matt Weiner has denied the
assertion that Revolutionary Road was an inspiration for the show, stating that he read the book after beginning work
on the pilot episode.
2
The literary nature of Mad Men has, as previously stated, made it popular contemporary subject matter for
literary and cultural critics, who have focused on the series themes, costumes, settings, and characters in numerous
articles. In the previously mentioned collection Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on the Television Series, critics
have constructed 12 different articles that are divided into sections such as The Contexts of Mad Men, The Politics
of Mad Men, and The Women of Mad Men. Within this collection critics focus on a variety of issues from the
television show. Critics Melanie Hernandez and David Thomas Holmberg characterize Don Draper as the latest
incarnation of a frontier hero, whose desire to head west is analogous to characters such as Natty Bumpo, Huck Finn,
and Jay Gatsby (Hernandez and Holmberg 55). David Pierson focuses on the economics of Mad Men, drawing, as I
plan to, on Frederic Jameson, and says that the series and the character of Don Draper: represent a crucial transitional
figure for both pre-1970s corporate and post-Fordist, flexible capitalism (Pierson 72). In the article A Mother Like
You: Pregnancy, the Maternal, and Nostalgia, critic Diana Davidson focuses on the series depiction of the often dark
vision of motherhood embodied by Betty Draper: Mad Men shows us motherhood through a historical lens: Weiner
and his team give us a show that enables both a remembering of certain kinds of motherhood and/or relief that these
experiences of motherhood are in the past (Davidson 101).

have engaged in dissecting everything from Mad Mens portrayal of women and
minorities to the cultural obsession with the style of clothing and home dcor that is
presented on the series, and everything in between. Current critical interest in the series
is extremely high; a search through the University of Pennsylvanias call for papers
database yields no less than 122 requests for criticism on the series. In addition, wellproduced, highly anticipated serialized narratives such as Mad Men, as well as series such
as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead, are consistently lauded in the
press as replacements for both the feature film as well as the novel.
With this critical willingness to consider media texts as literary in mind, my
analysis of Revolutionary Road and Mad Men will allow me to illustrate the tensions of
the era from two different perspectives, as well as through two different mediums: a
novel that was produced within the period it portrays, and a contemporary television
series that attempts to re-create the period through the very act of re-imagining it.
Revolutionary Road offers us a vision of suburban existence that is mirrored and revisited in Mad Men. The latter seems especially to illuminate the paradoxical nature of
nostalgia, in that although the series attempts to expose some of the harsh, bitter realities
of the era, it still, seemingly inescapably, fosters a feeling of nostalgia in the viewing
public. So that, even in our attempts to deconstruct the nostalgia of the 1950s and early
60s, we are at the same time, recreating and re-inscribing the very nostalgia that we are
attempting to deconstruct. Furthermore, while Revolutionary Road exists as a text that
was created in and about a specific temporal space, Mad Men seems to occupy a dual

The University of Illinois forum Kritik takes analysis of the series even further, offering an episode by
episode close reading of one entire season of the series. This analysis reinforces the novelistic interpretation of the
series as well. Still other articles focus on the nature of the television series itself. In Selling Nostalgia: Mad Men,
Postmodernism, and Neoliberalism, Deborah Tudor emphasizes Mad Mens position as a media product: Mad Men, a
contemporary media product situated in media-derived nostalgia, demonstrates how audiences read the past through the
post-modern, neo-liberal discourse of style (331).

temporality. The past as it is depicted in Mad Men allows us to re-experience and reevaluate itit allows us a method of analyzing the past with the supposed benefit of
hindsight, even as it persists in evoking a nostalgia for the very time-period it intends to
criticize.
My project disrupts and re-directs a romantic narrative of postwar America by
focusing on the latent anxiety found within the suburban landscapeby interrogating the
performative nature of the construction of the planned communities of the 1950s and
1960s and exposing the tensions and crises of identity that were borne out of the rise of
domesticity as well as a sharp increase in widespread consumerism. By placing my
argument into conversation with various critical interpretations, I analyze the discourses
of domesticity, consumerism, conformity, and discontent that permeate the themes of the
contemporary Mad Men along with temporally specific Revolutionary Road. I argue that
the descent into a society completely preoccupied by consumerism and conformity leads
directly to a feeling of emptiness, disillusionment, and meaninglessness in everyday
existence. More specifically, I attempt to displace and reconfigure these themes in a way
that will offer an explanation as to why they seem to operate so prominently in both
temporal spaces, and why a possibly pathological nostalgia for the era persists.
Drawing on the work of Cultural Studies theorists such as Frederic Jameson and
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, I explore how Revolutionary Road and Mad Men
trouble the planned community ideology by exposing the constructed artifice of those
communities as well as the false nostalgia the postwar period engenders. Jamesons
theories on the intersections of consumerism and nostalgia in the Post-modern era are of
particular use here. By examining the historical reality along with cultural nostalgia, I

argue that the performative and constructed nature of the suburban landscape was so
powerful an ideal that it has hidden and disfigured the truth about the postwar era. The
fractures in this simulated nostalgia are evident, however, in both Revolutionary Road
and Mad Men, both of which evoke atmospheres that are overwrought with tensions,
anxieties, isolation, and despair.
Chapter One, The Petrified Forest: The Tension Between Performance, Identity,
and Reality in Richard Yates Revolutionary Road explores the historical as well as the
individual themes that are present throughout Yates text, in which the primary
characters, Frank and April Wheeler, utilize escapism, performance, and ultimately
violence against the self to attempt to break free of the crushing suffocation of suburban
life. In Yates rendering, Frank Wheeler exemplifies a man who is pushed into a
meaningless career and a suburban family life that is fundamentally unsatisfying, while
April Wheeler embodies feminine bitterness and longing for a life outside of being a wife
and mother. Within this chapter, I argue that the extremely pronounced emphasis on
performance, as well as the actual housing and architecture of the suburban landscape,
contribute to an obvious critique of the containment, insularity, and isolation of the
postwar American suburb as a desolate, desperate landscape. In addition, I move beyond
arguments that focus on Aprils confinement as demonstrative of the feminine discontent
of the period, into a broader consideration of the ways in which multiple characters are
confined by a suburban space that forces performance and conformity, and therefore
breeds artificiality and discontent.
Recent critical work on Yatess novel and women, such as Richard Yates
Fictional Treatment of Women by Kate Charlton-Jones, has focused on Yates work as a

10

fundamental depiction of the often bitter realities of the lives of women of the postwar
era, but neglects the role that suburbia specifically plays in constructing this reality. In
her article, Charlton-Jones hints at the power of the culture of advertising and a new
importance placed on performance, or keeping up appearances, but focuses exclusively
on the effects that performance has on women in the texts. In her examination of not just
Revolutionary Road, but all of Yates work, the author finds that: The role of women,
the growth of a materialistic, performative culture led by the increasingly powerful
advertising and movie industries, and the small lives of ordinary people coming to terms
with the banal tragedies that suggest the pain and complexity of human existence are
investigated in all his work (1). Charlton-Jones reading of April, as well as some of the
fundamental themes present in Revolutionary Road, are somewhat analogous to my own
interpretation; however, she confines her analysis to the women in the text, while I
illuminate aspects of suburban culture, landscape, and architecture that contribute to
feelings of desperation and isolation among the novels characters. The insularity of the
suburbs operates as an oppositional force against itself in that its intended effectthat of
a strong sense of communitybecomes undermined by the impulse to exclude, to
protect, to keep out. In other words, the suburbs are defined not by the community that
they cultivate from within, but rather what they force outside, so that life within becomes
a distorted semblance of a communitya community built on fear of the outside, as well
as a fear of not conforming to the established norms and structures, rather than a
community built on shared experiences and positive attachments.
Hence, in my reading of Revolutionary Road, I deconstruct not only the
depictions of the female characters, but also draw conclusions about the whole of

11

suburban existence during the time period, for both the men and the women in the text, in
order to expose the ways in which the planned community and its promise of happiness
and shared experience fail to live up to expectations, and in fact produce the opposite of
what they promise by fostering feelings of isolation, emptiness, and falsity. Therefore,
we see that it is not only April who is fundamentally unfulfilled within the containment
and isolation of the suburban landscape. Yates offers us devastatingly stifled visions of
Frank Wheeler as well as his neighbors, including a decidedly jarring representation of
mental illness in the Givings son, John.
In addition to my analysis of the containment of the suburban landscape, I also
expose the shift toward a meaningless existence that permeates the text due to the plunge
toward excessive, compulsive consumption. Additionally, I seek to illuminate the
simmering resentment and rage created by the pressure to perform in order to conform to
strict suburban social standards. Frank and Aprils bitter anger at the performative nature
of their lives manifests itself in the delusion that they will escape the performance by
moving to Europe, an escape that is ultimately doomed. The ultimate failure to escape
the isolation of the suburban space is therefore also a failure to escape the performance, a
failure to somehow escape the disillusioning cycle of bitter dissatisfaction. The image of
Europe as an alternate landscape within the text emphasizes that there is a space that is
able to simulate a more meaningful existence. The fact that the Wheelers are incapable
of escape to Europe is representative of their inability to create a meaningful, fulfilling
life for themselves that is not dependent on a constant, suffocating pressure to perform.
Revolutionary Road ultimately represents a crisis of identity for the whole of the nation, a
crisis that is played out in the cloistered, claustrophobic, false ideal of the planned

12

community. The tension created by the universal standardization that Jameson refers
to as characteristic of the move to the suburbs during the postwar era therefore eventually
leads to crisis within the pages of Yates Revolutionary Road. The novel moves beyond
just a general sense of malaise about the state of suburbia; rather, it is dominated by long
scenes of performance that are disrupted by violent outbursts of rage at being pushed into
that performance. Chapter One of this thesis highlights those moments of rage as
emblematic of the simmering crisis as a result of the whole of American societys descent
into meaningless consumerism, a state of being that is hinted at in Revolutionary Road,
and ultimately brought to complete fruition in the television series Mad Men.
If Revolutionary Road is representative of tension and anxiety about the
transformation of American identity, Mad Men represents the result of that
transformation. The descent into a society where the meaning of life is reduced to
consumption of products has been fulfilled. The key difference between the two texts is
that Mad Men focuses on the creators and promoters of consumer society, rather than just
the participants in it. The result of this focus is that the characters seem more self-aware
and, therefore, even more morally ambivalent, though at the same time they appear to
have more freedom than the characters in Revolutionary Road. In addition, Mad Men
includes the progression of time and the movement into an era where the status quo does
begin to be questioned by society at large, and it is obviously created with the inescapable
benefit/burden of hindsightthe ability to the view the past from the seemingly superior
position of the future. Indeed, however, it is precisely this comfortingly superior position
that needs questioning, as this former collective self of postwar America is in actuality
a space that we are unable to occupy or question except through the distorted lens of

13

nostalgia; therefore, any critique of the norms and values of the time period becomes
clouded by an irrepressible desire for romanticization.
In Chapter Two, The Revolution Will Be Advertised: Mad Men and the
Commodification of a Culture, I examine the contemporary fixation with the postwar
time period, which seems to have risen out of a re-emergence of some of the same crises,
tensions, and fears that were persistent in postwar America. While it is not surprising
that Mad Men has recaptured the American fascination with the era, it seems that Mad
Men also disrupts any attempt to romanticize the period through its critiques of the
oppression of women and consumerism, as well as its constant attempts to complicate the
very feelings of nostalgia that make the show so popular. The chapter examines Mad
Men through the lens of Jamesons nostalgia mode, in which he looks at all postmodern
forms of production that seek to re-visit the past as symptomatic of our inability to
properly address the present:
This particular practice of pastiche is not high-cultural but very much
within mass culture and it is generally known as the nostalgia filmWe
must conceive of this category in the broadest way: narrowly, no doubt, it
consists merely of films about the past and about specific generational
moments of that pastStar Wars reinvents this experience in the form of
pastiche...it satisfies a deep (might I even say repressed?) longing to
experience them again: it is a complex object in whichthe adult public is
able to gratify a deeper and more properly nostalgic desire to return to that
older period and to live its strange old aesthetic artifacts through once
againwe have become unable to focus on our own presentan alarming

14

and pathological symptom of a society that has become incapable of

dealing with time and history. (Postmodernism and Consumer Society
1965)
So for Jameson, our impulse to re-experience the past is a re-enactment of our own
repression. We somehow need to fulfill a desire for the past in order to reconcile the
presentand for Jameson, this is problematic. Mad Men is interesting because it does
not simply invoke the past while depicting the present, or even the future, the way that a
film such as Star Wars does, but it actually immerses us in the past even as it attempts to
criticize it.
Because Mad Men seems to take all of the anxieties of Revolutionary Road a step
further, its explorations of performance and conformity, alternate landscapes, and identity
crisis are intensified. Mad Men represents a marked disruption of the pervasive romantic
postwar American narrative. Mad Men sparks nostalgia in its viewers, but at the same
time it offers a bitterly realistic version of the past. However, I also find it interesting to
focus on moments within Mad Men that push against all of its attempts at disruption. In
other words, it seems that there are areas where the oppression of women may be reinscribed rather than questioned, as well as areas where the glorification of consumption
and nostalgia is reestablished as well. Mad Men takes the critique of consumerism a step
further in that all of the experiences of the lead character, Don Draper, are transformed
and reproduced as inspiration for advertisements. Therefore, life experiences on Mad
Men become nothing more than elements of the creation necessary to persuade society to
consume. In the world of Mad Men, to live is to consume; consumption becomes the
meaning of life itself. This apparent critique of consumerism becomes complicated by

15

the fact that Mad Men the series is a product of the culture industry, and operates as a
vehicle for advertising on multiple levels, with stars of the series starring in
advertisements that air during broadcasts of the show. This seeming contradiction
highlights just one of the many instances of the strange duality of Mad Men as a series
that seems to attempt to deconstruct and criticize established notions and false nostalgia,
even as it continues to reinforce those very same ideals.
Thus, we see the rise of Mad Men inspired fashions, Mad Men themed parties, a
resurgence of the popularity of mid-century furniture, and even attempts at copycat
television shows also set in the 1950s and 60s. The strange dual space that Mad Men
occupies as both critic and creator of nostalgia points to the dysfunction of nostalgia
itself, a dysfunction that, according to Jameson, renders us incapable of properly reading
history: Faced with these ultimate objectsour social, historical, and existential present,
and the past as referentthe incompatibility of a postmodernist nostalgia art language
with genuine historicity becomes dramatically apparent (Postmodernism 19). For
Jameson, the fixation on the aesthetic vision is emblematic of our inability to move past
our own nostalgia about a particular time periodso that Mad Men becomes a vehicle to
convey a sense of pastness through a collection of images and material objects, rather
than a true critic of cultural history. Still, however, there is a persistent sense that Mad
Men does seek to tear away at the nostalgia it creates, so the critical viewer is left to
interrogate whether the attempt at deconstructing nostalgia from within is ever possible,
or if it is always doomed to failure.
The nostalgic impulse is further complicated by the fact that the show uses actual
products in its fictional advertising campaigns, a fact that illustrates the contradiction

16

inherent even in the production of nostalgia that the series seems to at once criticize and
create. Again, Frederic Jamesons ideas regarding the postmodern and consumer society
become helpful here: We have seen that there is a way in which postmodernism
replicates or reproducesreinforcesthe logic of consumer capitalism; the more
significant question is whether there is also a way in which it resists that logic
(Postmodernism and Consumer Society 1974). The purpose of this project is to
explore and expose the paradoxical nature of Mad Men and the nostalgia that it both
creates and resists.
In the introduction to the 2011 anthology, Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on
the Television Series, editor Scott Stoddard summarizes one reason that scholars and
critics may have latched on to the series various themes: Mad Men is a period drama
about change just after the mid-twentieth century, which reveals a lot about our response
to shifting ideological terrains in the early twenty-first (5). Stoddard, therefore, situates
Mad Men within a discourse that reads it for its commentary on the present as well as on
the past. This point of view is echoed in an interview with Lauren Goodlad: Many
viewers find Mad Mens view of the past compelling, and some see it as providing an
accurate, fascinating window into postwar America. Goodlads emphasis on describing
the show as accurate illustrates the move toward the disruption of the traditional,
romanticized version of the past that Americans have embedded within our
consciousness.
By exploring the ways in which Revolutionary Road and Mad Men offer
perspectives on the false nostalgia of the postwar period, I am able to also situate these
texts within our contemporary context and explore the ways in which they offer us an

17

examination of our current identity as well. Through the historical perspective of

Stephanie Coontz and Tyler-May, as well as the theoretical perspectives of Jameson and
Adorno and Horkheimer, I explore the impulse to revisit and rewrite the past in a way
that ruptures the fusion between nostalgia and the real. Ultimately, I explore the idea that
both texts engage in a conversation that is overwhelmingly relevant to the ubiquitous
nature of consumer society today.

18

THE PETRIFIED FOREST: THE TENSION BETWEEN PERFORMANCE,

IDENTITY, AND REALITY IN RICHARD YATES REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
The novel Revolutionary Road opens with a scene in which April Wheeler is
starring in a neighborhood production of the play The Petrified Forest. Through this
opening scene, author Richard Yates is immediately signaling a performative culturea
culture where every action, every facial expression is carefully measured and maintained.
It is only in the scenes where Frank and April argue, and through the third person
omniscient narration, that we become clued in to the actual emotions and thoughts that
are occurring within the characters, though at times, even that information is withheld
from the reader, with eventually devastating results. Yates emphasis on the performative
aspects of his characters lives creates a persistent atmosphere of tension and unease, so
that the reader is consistently left uncomfortable and disconcerted. The contradiction that
forms as we experience the feeling that things appear to be all right, even as we also
sense that they very much are not becomes a masterfully executed metaphor for the
contradictions at the very core of suburban existence at the time in which the novel was
written. In other words, Yates allows the reader to become immersed within a culture
where everything on the surface is performance, so that as the novel unfolds, we are
forced to continually wonder when that delicate and barely maintained surface will
shatter and the harsh reality of the Wheelers unhappiness will be forced into the open.

19

Indeed, within these beginning pages of Revolutionary Road, the criticism of

pretense, conformity, and consumer culture are strikingly obvious. The focus of the first
chapter is on the Laurel Players, the new local community theater, and their presentation
of the play The Petrified Forest, which is overshadowed in popular culture by a more
well-known 1936 film version. The play and the film depict a disillusioned, small-town
waitress who longs to move to Europe, and a suicidal customer who also seeks an escape
from his banal daily existence. So even before we are (harshly) introduced to the
discontent that permeates the Wheelers lives, we see that they are associated with
characters who feel trapped within a mundane existence and dream of escape. In a 2009
article in the New Yorker Magazine online, reviewer Vicky Raab recognizes the
relevance of the plot of The Petrified Forest to the Wheelers lives: While I agree that
the Wheelers and others in their community are self-dramatizing hollow men, April did
go to drama school, and I can see how the lead roles resonance with her own history has
infected her psyche and bled into her life, as well as the plays relevance to the Oedipal
attitudes of men like Frank and Shep, returning from the Second World War with
questions about their masculinity.
So it appears that the inclusion of The Petrified Forest within the text of
Revolutionary Road was a conscious attempt to highlight the inner suffering of the
characters in the novel, or to take this idea a step further, the Laurel Players choice to
produce The Petrified Forest reflects the desire for a dramatic escape from the tedium of
suburban existence. In this way, the production of The Petrified Forest functions as a
sort of mise en abyme, in that the plot of Forest creates a mirror effect for the plays
performers, hinting at the inherent reproduction, or cycle, that they are trapped within.

20

Here, the failure of the performance indicates the inability to recognize their reflections in
a meaningful or substantive way. It is as if, by selecting the play, they have shown the
beginnings of self-awareness, yet they are ultimately unable to productively utilize the
images that are generated in order to initiate an escape from the cycle. The importance of
the meaning of the play, as well as the community theater as a whole is not unnoticed by
the productions audience, who indeed acknowledge that the play will have a deeper
meaning for them:
Anyone could see that they were a better than average crowd, in terms of
education and good health, and it was clear too that they considered this a
significant evening. They all knewThe Petrified Forest was hardly one
of the worlds great plays. But it wasa fine theater piece with a basic
point of view that was every bit as valid today as in the thirties (Even
more valid, one man kept telling his wife. . .even more valid, when you
think about it). (Yates 5)
It is clear here that the Players, as well as the townspeople, are looking to The Petrified
Forest to resonate with their own situations, to allow them to experience the performance
as a way to process their own disillusion and dissatisfactions. The evening is about more
than just fun or relaxation, it is a quiet exhibition of protest about their own banal lives.
Because the play is unable to produce the cathartic effect that both the performers and the
audience are in search of, it is a representation of failure to make a breakthrough that will
allow them the self-awareness to escape the meaninglessness of their lives.
In the Players production of The Petrified Forest, April Wheeler plays the role of
the waitress, Gabby, who sees Europe as her way out of an isolated and depressing world.

21

As the novel progresses, April too imagines a move to Europe as her only way out of the
suffocating suburbs and her oppressive role as wife and mother. The failure of Aprils
performance of Gabby is particularly compelling here because it signals two quite
different aspects of her character. First, it allows the reader to quickly and easily
perceive that April is not adept at performing the roles that are assigned to her, whether
within the context of the play itself or her actual life in the suburbs. It is clear that April
is decidedly uncomfortable in the roles that she is assigned. Secondly, it shows us that
even the idea of moving to Europe, the escape that she deems so necessary to the success
and happiness of her marriage and her future, is not real. In other words, the vision of
Europe as an escape does not come from a moment of clarity or an epiphany about the
meaninglessness of her life. Instead it comes from a failed performance of a fictional
play and therefore demonstrates that April has the ability to consume, but lacks the ability
to produce meaning in a constructive or original way. She mindlessly absorbs the images
and characterizations of the play, even as she fails to meaningfully identify with the
reflected image of herself in the play. So we see that even the escape to Europe that
quickly and completely begins to define Aprils very existence is actually yet another
product of a constructed realityyet another piece of fiction that becomes central to her
identity overall. The image, the performance, has overridden reality. April has adopted
Gabbys desire to escape despite the fact that she lacks the self-awareness to
acknowledge how that desire is created.
Hence, the failure of the performance of The Petrified Forest is an indication of
the larger failure of performance within the domestic space of suburban living, and so it
takes on an air of portentous significance in its placement at the beginning of the novel.

22

It hints most notably at the fundamental failures of the characters of April Wheeler and
Shep Campbell, who are apparently lacking a fundamental sense of self to the point that
they are unable to tap into their own emotions in order to re-enact them within the context
of performing a play. So while it appears that The Petrified Forest is chosen by the
Players in order to satiate or articulate some desire to escape, they are still ultimately
unable to express those emotions or even vicariously fulfill that desire. The crisis of
individual identity that manifests itself in the failure of the performance of The Petrified
Forest points to a larger crisis of identity that exists within the suburban landscape. In
other words, those who live within the constructed, man-made communities are so caught
up in performance and conformity that they fail to recognize or enact any semblance of
self in a rational or even creative manner, so that when they finally do acknowledge their
own desires or fears, they are only able to do so in an explosive and destructive way.
Yates depiction of the embarrassing failure of the performance of the play is also
especially interesting because it seems to signify a strange layering of the performances
of the members of the theater group. That is to say that none of the groups members are
actually actors and actresses, except for April who attended drama school, so they are
very awkwardly pretending to know how to do something that they actually cannot do.
Their complete and total failure seems to hint at the impossibility of successful
performance: they are unable to successfully act in a play; therefore they are particularly
inept at pretending to pretend: The trouble was that from the very beginning they had
been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves, and they had compounded
that fear by being afraid to admit it (4). These lines operate as a very clear
representation of how Yates third-person narration is used to attempt to highlight and

23

break through the performative and conformist natures of the characters within the novel.
We see that the Laurel Players are not only afraid to embarrass themselves, but also that
they are afraid to admit their fear to the others, even though if they did they would find
that everyone felt the same way. This hidden, suppressed emotion is emblematic of the
culture of conformity and isolation in which they liveno one has anyone with whom to
communicate difficulties because no one will admit difficulty. The result is paralyzing
fear and misperceptionthe feeling that one is completely aloneno one else can
understand their fears or anxieties because no one else suffers them. Therefore, the
failure of the performance is devastating to both the actors and the audience, as depicted
in a scene that takes place after intermission:
None of [the audience] wanted to go through with the second and final act,
but they all did. And so did the Players, whose one thought now, as plain
as the sweat on their faces, was to put the sorry business behind themit
seemed to go on for hours, a cruel and protracted endurance test in which
April Wheelers performance was as bad as the others, if not
worseWhen the curtain fell at last it was an act of mercy (6).
Neither the audience nor the actors are able to take the disastrous performance in stride,
as they cannot truly express their emotions to each other. Each person suffers in
isolation, even amidst a crowd of members of the community. They are all experiencing
the same fallout, yet they are unable to look to each other, if only to laugh about it.
Instead they long to escape the painful evidence of their collective failure: There was
nothing to watch now but the massed faces of the audience as they pressed up the
aislesAnxious, round-eyed, two by two, they looked and moved as if calm and orderly

24

escape from this place had become the one great necessity of their lives (7). The sheer
terror that the audience displays as a result of the plays failure illustrates the fear and
anxiety of the discovery and/or acknowledgement that the performances that they are
actually engaged inthe performed ideal of suburban American lifecould also be so
easily exposed to the world.
In addition to highlighting conformity, containment, and performance, Yates also
offers us a vision of a world that has become enveloped by consumption and
meaninglessness. It becomes clear to the reader that the idea of a community theater
group was a way for the inhabitants of western Connecticut to attempt to inject culture
into their lives, though they have failed miserably at it: All winter, gathering in one
anothers living rooms for excited talks about Ibsen and Shaw and ONeill, and then for a
show of hands in which a common-sense majority chose The Petrified Forest (4). The
theater group becomes something to grasp onto, something that allows them to feel that
they are creating meaning, rather than dully moving through one day to another. The
idea that the production of the play is actually something bigger, something meaningful,
is reflected in the directors advice to the Players: Remember this. Were not just
putting on a play here. Were establishing a community theater, and thats a pretty
important thing to be doing (5). The play and the theater become a means to create a
shared experience, so the failure of the play is a failure of the community, a failure of the
Players ability to improve their own communal experiences.
In the context of the failure of community, the plays title, The Petrified Forest,
takes on additional significance in that it seems to be reflective of the isolated, inorganic
nature of the suburban landscape. Petrified wood is organic material that has gradually

25

been eroded and replaced by inorganic stone. The planned communities of the suburbs
are also inorganichouses and spaces that have been constructed for the purpose of
fostering a sense of community even as they exist as exclusionary and isolationist spaces.
The newly constructed homes placed in pre-determined spaces outside of the more
organically developed cities represent something unnatural, something that creates the
opposite of what it was intended to create, just as a petrified forest is an example of the
natural transforming into the unnatural. The petrified tree appears on the surface to be a
living tree; however, the inner, vital aspects of the tree have been transformed into stone.
The suburban community that exists within Yates text appears to be a functioning
community, and the Wheelers appear to be a functioning family, but the innermost vital
aspects of the community and family are actually in stark opposition to what they appear
to be. The constructed nature of the suburbs along with the pressure to conform and
consume render the suburban lifestyle an empty one. It appears as though a contented life
is available, but beneath the surface there is no meaning; there is only stone.
The meaningless consumption that the residents of western Connecticut engage
in, as well the ways in which their living spaces, which become pieces of their identities,
are manufactured, artificial, and out-of-place is almost immediately evident within the
first few chapters of Revolutionary Road:
The Players, coming out of their various kitchen doorswould see a
landscape in which only a few, very old, weathered houses seemed to
belong; it made their own homes look as weightless and impermanent, as
foolishly misplaced as a great many bright new toys that had been left
outdoors overnight and rained on. Their automobiles didnt look right

26

eitherunnecessarily wide and gleaming in the colors of candy and ice

cream, seeming to wince at each splatter of mud, they crawled
apologeticallydown Route Twelve. (8)
So here we see that the homes and cars that the Players inhabit occupy a strange and
foreign landscape in which they appear to be oddities. Yates compares the houses to
foolishly misplaced toys, words that convey not just the sense that they do not belong
in the space, but also that they carry as much depth and importance as a childs
playthings. Yates goes a step further when he says that they were left outdoors
overnight and rained on, lines that emphasize both the carelessness and the
impermanence of the homes as cultural relicsa statement that is further reiterated by
the comparison to the old, weathered houses that do belong within the landscape.
Perhaps the most notable idea in these lines is not simply the idea that the homes are out
of place because they are new, but the idea that they will somehow never age in a
dignified manner the way that the older houses have, that they will somehow be ruined by
those who live inside of them.
In addition to the isolation reinforced by the containment of the domestic spaces
of the suburbs, the rampant consumerism that was pervading suburban culture is
examined in Yates representations of the automobiles, and eventually the highways,
which of course came to extreme cultural prominence during the postwar time period,
and which played a crucial role in enabling the creation of the suburbs, as they allowed
workers the freedom to move away from where they worked. Yates depicts the
automobiles as colored like candy and ice cream, which operates not only as yet another
connection between material objects and child-like desires, but also seems to indicate a

27

desperate need to consume, and to consume items that are not necessarily substantive or
meaningful. Candy and ice cream are sugar-laden, unnecessary desserts, with little to no
nutritional value, just as the cars exist to appease a desire to appear successful or
important, but are not necessarily there to satisfy an actual human need. While Yates
describes the cars as just as misplaced as the houses within the confines of the
neighborhood, he describes them as able to relax as they finally reach the highway, a
long bright valley of colored plastic and plate glass and stainless steelKING KONE,
MOBILGAS, SHOPORAMA, EAT... (7). The cars, as icons of an obsession with
consumption and conformity, are at home in a landscape that provides an opportunity for
even more consumption. Each sign that Yates mentions demands some form of
consumption, ice cream, gas, shopping, leading to the last sign that operates as almost a
direct orderEAT. The fact that Yates begins his description of this vapid suburban
landscape by describing its inhabitants as The Players hints at the overarching idea that
there is a crisis of identity at the heart of the strange society, a crisis that is such that the
individuals existing within it are, in actuality, not individuals, but rather performers
men and women attempting to fulfill a role that has been created by someone else.
Fredric Jameson describes the way in which architecture and space emerged in
postwar America as engulfed by the time periods obsession with consumption and
commodification:
The immediate postwar heritage of this virtually naturalspecies
protection has been the diversion of such aesthetic instinctsinto instant
commodificationfast foodsand, on the other hand, the kitsch interior
decoration and furniturewhich has been explained as a kind of security

28

blanketchintz of the first postwar domestic productiondesigned to

ward off memories of the depression and its stark physical deprivations.
(Postmodernism 97)
So the newly constructed homes and planned communities of the postwar are not
inauthentic simply because they are new, but also because they are consciously
attempting to write over a harsher past. In this sense, the comparison to carelessly
discarded toys takes on another layer of meaningthey are the product of a sort of
childs rebelliona response to a prior generation that could not afford to take such
luxuries for granted. This willingness to discard the past, as well as the present, is
described by Adorno and Horkheimer as one of the defining characteristics of The
Culture Industry: Even now the older houses just outside the concrete city centers look
like slums, and the new bungalows on the outskirts are at one with the flimsy
structuresin their praise of technical progress and their built in demand to be discarded
after a short while like empty food cans (1224). So Yates is offering us a creative vision
that mirrors these ideasthat a quest to become a society that is so obsessed with the
new that it loses its grip on its identity begins to emerge during the postwar period. The
obsession with the new that characterizes the movement toward consumerism during the
late 50s and early 60s imbues the title Revolutionary Road with a somewhat ironic twist.
In other words, the revolution of the title does not signal a rebellion or shift in power
among the public, but rather a move toward a culture that is seduced by the new in
terms of mass marketing and consumption. Revolutionary is the new, exciting, easier
way of life; it is revolutionary new housing developments, revolutionary new cars, and
revolutionary new household products. It is the mass seduction of the citizens propagated

29

by the culture industry. Additionally, if we return briefly to Aprils failure to recognize

her image reflected in the production of the play, as well as the idea that she is ultimately
only able to consume the image, rather than produce it, we can also read revolutionary
with regard to a cyclical pattern from which consumers are incapable of escape.
The role of the actual physical space and architecture of the suburban landscape in
America is also crucial to developing an understanding of the fear, the desire to conform,
and the emphasis on performativity that were occurring at the time that Revolutionary
Road was written. Additionally, they produce containment and insularity that result in
being trapped. The tension and anxiety that the Wheelers develop as a result of their
move to the suburbs, their participation in a lifestyle that they initially reject, are crucial
to the development of the plot of the novel. Indeed, what are the suburbs if not
representations of a forced, conformist societal creation? They were, in reality, planned
communitiesthey did not organically develop in areas where communities lived and
worked, but instead were created as an alternate, more ideal space, a protected space, a
space where the realities of the harsh world could be kept at bay.
The anxiety regarding the strict conformity a move to the suburbs necessitated is
demonstrated by the Wheelers during their first visit to Revolutionary Road to look at
houses. The resistance to the social structure of suburban life is evident in their hesitance
when looking at properties, and is especially evident in their reactions to the physical
structure and environment of the newly constructed homes in the area. The description of
their first trip to see what would become their home on Revolutionary Road comes
immediately after the explosively angry and violent fight that Frank and April have on
their way home from the performance of The Petrified Forest, a fight in which they shout

30

devastatingly harsh insults at each othercalling each other sick, disgusting-- to the
point that Frank erupts in violence, almost hitting April, but instead banging his fist
repeatedly into the side of his car.
The fact that this incident immediately precedes the shopping for and purchasing
of their suburban home is extraordinarily significant in that it illuminates the idea that
their home in the Connecticut suburbs is actually the source of all of their animosity
toward each other, an idea that is reinforced by April saying that Frank has her safely in
a trap, a trap that for April means her role as suburban wife and mother. Franks
incredulous reply to her is to say You in a trap! You in a trap! Jesus, dont make me
laugh (Yates 24), lines which indicate that Frank feels just as trapped by his life and
marriage as April does by hers. The word trap used here takes on a special significance
in that it reveals the contradiction inherent in a suburban existence that values
containment and isolation. By emphasizing the importance of sealing the suburbs against
all external forces of disruption, a sealing in is also created so that the obsessive
insularity leads to isolation, and hence a feeling of being trapped.
By placing the couples devastatingly explosive fight immediately before the
scene in which they move to the suburbs from the city, Yates seems to emphasize the
idea that the suburbs are most precisely the trap from which April and Frank cannot
escape. Additionally, the placement of the initial move to the suburbs within the
narrative structure of the novel serves to highlight the contrast between image and reality,
surface and depth. The disturbing nature of the fight scene is meant to illustrate the ugly
reality behind Frank and Aprils relationship, but immediately following it we get another
image of performanceFrank and April as the happy couple seeking domestic harmony

31

through participation in the American dream. Still, as they view the physical space and
architecture of the suburbs, we sense their reluctance. The conformity, artificiality, and
simply too-perfect structures of the houses in the development are reflective of
everything that worries the couple about their movethat a move to the suburbs is in fact
a loss of identity. Therefore Frank and April immediately seek to somehow set
themselves apart from the rest of the community: Mrs. Givings understoodthey
wanted something out of the ordinarya small remodeled barn or carriage
housesomething with a little charmand she did hate having to tell them that those
things simply werent available any more (27). Here, we sense the idea that the
domestic space is an extension of identity. If the Wheelers are able to resist the
conventional planned community structure, they will in turn have the ability to resist the
ideology as well. Mrs. Givings, who senses their resistance, plays into their emotions by
critiquing large suburban developments: And then eventuallyit leads on upto a
perfectly dreadful new development called Revolutionary Hill Estatesgreat hulking
split levels, all in the most nauseous pastelsNo, but the place I want to show you has
absolutely no connection with that (28). Mrs. Givings senses Frank and Aprils
reluctance, and plays on their derision toward the suburbs in order to persuade them to
buy the house on Revolutionary Road, a house whose neatness seduces them despite their
misgivings about the move: Yes, I think its sort of nice, dont you darling? Of course
it does have the picture window...Still I dont suppose one picture window is necessarily
going to destroy our personalities (28). The picture window here obviously operates as
a symbol of the conventional suburban house, but it is also representative of the strict
conformity and performativity that the Wheelers will now have to endure. They are no

32

longer just one of the anonymous masses living out their lives in the city. They are
highly visible members of a suburban community who will be expected to conform to
the ideals and conventions of family life during the era. In other words, the picture
window reiterates the culture of performance in which the Wheelers are about to become
participants. It mimics a theatrical fourth wall, and is symbolic of the audience that
will monitor Frank and Aprils performance as members of the suburban space. Indeed,
it is also worth mentioning here, that in the 2009 film version of the novel, the picture
window is used as a powerful symbol during the dramatic climax of the film, as April
Wheeler stares out of her large picturesque window while beginning to bleed to death
after her self-induced miscarriage. While the picture window is not explicitly mentioned
during the final scenes of the novel, the fact that it was included so significantly in that
portion of the film version seems to highlight Aprils violent rejection of the social
structures that trapped her and eventually ended her life.
Later, we see that even Mrs. Givings is troubled by the steady progression of the
neighborhood towards a lifestyle that values only what is new and what she sees as
empty and artificial. For her, her home is differentit is real because it is olderit is
not a product of a planned, constructed community for city dwellers looking for a place to
raise children. For her, it is a place with real value:
It was one of the few authentic pre-Revolutionary dwellings left in the
district, flanked by two of the few remaining wine glass elms, and she
liked to think of it as a final bastion against vulgarityshe might have to
stand smiling in the kitchens of horrid little ranch houses and split levels,
dealing with impossibly rude people whose childrenspilled Kool-Aid on

33

her dress; she might have to breathe exhaust fumes and absorb the
desolation of Route Twelve, with its supermarkets and pizza joints and
frozen custard stands, but these only heightened the joy of her returning.
(51)
Here again we see Yates allowing us to see past the performance and into the reality of a
character through omniscient narration. We are allowed to see that Mrs. Givings finds
the new suburban existence vulgar, horrid, and desolate. She seems to be seeking
something authentic, something real. Here again the use of the word revolutionary
takes on more than one meaning, as her older house, a bastion amidst the growth of her
suburban neighborhood, has escaped the revolutionary new ways of life that are
proclaimed as convenient, futuristic, and amazing by the producers of mass culture.
As the Wheelers begin to compromise their own value system, or at least their
own vision of what that system should be, in order to convince themselves that their
move to the suburbs is for the best, they also begin to see the appeal of the brand new,
perfectly constructed, spotlessly clean house as opposed to the older, grimier city
apartments to which they are accustomed:
The place did have possibilitiesa sparse, skillful arrangement of
furniture would counteract the prim suburban look of this too-symmetrical
living room. On the other hand, the very symmetry of the place was
undeniably appealingthe fact that all its corners made right angles, that
each of its floorboards lay straight and true, that its doors hung in perfect
balance and closed without scrapingthey could see their children
running barefoot down this hallway free of mildew and splinters and

34

cockroaches and grit. It did have possibilities. The gathering disorder of

their lives might still be sorted out and made to fit these roomsWhat
could be frightened in as wide and bright, as clean and quiet a house as
this? (29)
In this section of Yates text, the duality of suburban life is exceedingly clear. In fact, it
is apparent in the Wheelers very thought process while examining the house, and we see
it through phrases such as on the other hand and the place did have possibilities. We
also see the tension between the old and the new, the natural and the artificial, and the
appeal of a space that has been cleansed of impurities, which exists as an alternate,
deliberately constructed spacea space that was consciously created as a response to the
fears intrinsic to urban dwelling. The Wheelers object to the nature of the suburbs, yet
they admit that the appeal of a safe, insulated space is undeniable. The house is free of
mildew, splinters, cockroaches, and gritit is immune to external elements. Yates
emphasis on the inconveniences mentioned here reinforces the fear of the external that
the suburbs thrive upon. Mildew, splinters, cockroaches, and grit are all representative of
the feared and unwanted outside world intruding upon domestic space. The suburbs, in
contrast, represent the insular, sterilized space where the elements are safely forced
outward. They are able to keep the external at bay, to isolate and insulate in order to
form a supposedly sheltered, protected environment. Thus, they mistakenly believe that
the ordered and predictable space reflected in the construction of the suburbs will also be
able to contain and eradicate the gathering disorder of their own messy lives.
The exclusionary practices that typified suburban life are also exemplified within
the novel by its presentation of John Givings, the mentally-ill son of the real-estate agent

35

Mrs. Givings, who Frank and April temporarily befriend at Mrs. Givings request. John
is the subject of neighborhood gossip and whispersthe glaring example of abnormality
has been pushed out of the community into a mental institution. Mrs. Givings attempts
to introduce him to the Wheelers illustrate her need to silence the rumors, to bring John
back into the suburban fold, to restore a sense of normalcy to her familys reputation. His
status as an outsider is solidified in Mrs. Givings description of his circumstances:
What with overwork...hed had what amounted to a complete nervous
breakdown...Fortunately he was back in this vicinity for a time...but all the same it was
worrying to his father and to her. His doctors had thought it wise for him to have a
complete rest, so just for the present he was---well, actually, just for the present hes at
Greenacres (53). The break here between the textual narration and actual dialogue is
indicative of the hesitation and fear that Mrs. Givings feels by admitting that her son does
not conform to the standards of suburbia. His excluded status is emphasized by his living
arrangement, thus reinscribing the notion that the domestic space is an outward symbol of
ones compliance with social structures and norms. John Givings exists outside the
insulated suburban space, therefore he is questionable. The tension, fear, and hesitation
that Mrs. Givings feels does not stem only from John Givings past, but also from the
admission that she does not conform to the image of the ideal.
The value that Mrs. Givings places on images is further represented by her fantasy
of Johns meeting with the Wheelers:
This would be no ordinary visit to the WheelersApril Wheeler was
there, seated in a white wrought iron chair and turning her pretty head to
smile with affection at some wise and fatherly remark by Howard

36

Givings...Frank Wheeler was engaged in one of his earnest conversations

with John, who was reclining in dignified convalescence on a white
wroughtiron chaise lounge...she could see him turn his head to look up at
her and say Mother? Wont you join us? The picture kept recurring for
days until it was as real as a magazine illustration, and she kept improving
on it. (52)
The most significant phrase here is as real as a magazine illustration, as it gestures
toward the importance of mass-produced images to persuade the men and women who
consumed them that the representations had some basis in reality, when, in fact, just the
opposite was the case. To believe that something is as real as a magazine illustration is
to consciously or subconsciously admit that the thing is, in fact, not real at all. The
repetition of the color white within the fantasy contributes to its portrayal as a dream
something ethereal, something purea space where the ugly realities of the world, such
as John Givings mental illness, are erased or washed away. Mrs. Givings fantasy is the
very essence of the impulse to internalize what has been consumed. Here, images of
Johns disease become harmless. He is not wrestling with his demons on a psychiatrists
couch, he is engaging in dignified convalescence on a chaise lounge. In her mind, all
of the uncontrollable outside forces are powerless. She is able to create a perfect
environment where her son is accepted as part of the community, engaging in pleasantries
while the Wheelers children could be playing quietly in the shadowsdressed in white
shorts and tennis shoes, catching fireflies in Mason jars (53).
The suburban emphasis on consumption and performance as fundamental aspects
of what life should look like is more than just a natural cultural occurrence; it is, in fact, a

37

nationally imposed value system that is consciously constructed in the national

imagination as a response to the communist threat. The postwar time period was
characterized by a culture of containment that was marked by containing the communist
threat nationally, thus the emphasis on the suburban and domestic provided a contained
solution to subversive cultural elements. Author Elaine Tyler-May addresses the
movement toward the domestic sphere as an answer to communism in her book
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era: The cosmopolitan urban
culture represented a decline in the self-reliant entrepreneurial spirit, posing a threat to
the national security that was perceived as akin to the threat of communism itselfThe
domestic ideology emerged as a buffer against those disturbing tendencies (10).
The domestic ideology did not only consist of the impulse to move to a nuclear
family model, but also to move out of the city, into the security of the suburbs, and
perhaps most importantly, to foster the image of idyllic domestic security by purchasing
domestic accessories in the forms of homes, cars, and appliances. Therefore, a lifestyle
that embraces the consumption of material goods and participates in demonstrations of
material wealth becomes the essence of the American capitalist ideal that Jameson and
Adorno and Horkheimer are criticizing. Tyler-May also addresses the concept of
suburban life and consumer culture as examples of the superiority of American capitalism
within postwar containment culture. In the chapter of her book entitled The Commodity
Gap: Consumerism and the Modern Home, Tyler-May explains that American
politicians pointed to the seeming success of the suburbs and the American family as
indicative of a successful society overall:

38

But for Nixon, home ownership represented more than a comfortable way
of life; it was the validation of the free enterprise system. Nixons frame
of reference was the family: There are 44 million families in the United
StatesThirty-one million families own their own homes and the land on
which they were built. Americas 44 million families own a total of 56
million cars, 50 million television sets, and 143 million radio sets. (155)
So we see that home ownership and the steady amassing of material goods and
possessions become symbolic of the essence of Americaan ideal that means one is
truly a participant in the American way of life. Still, the ideal is an illusion. For one, it
ignores the population that did not live in the suburbs, but lived in the less-than-ideal
vision of the city, a population that included minorities and the poor. In addition, it
places an extraordinary amount of pressure on the families who did live in the suburbs, so
that the suburban existence in actuality becomes a symbol not of an ideal life, but instead
the epitome of a simulation, in essence, a lie. The picturesque suburban landscape
becomes a frightening example of a superficial layer of perfection that actually hides a
creeping, disturbing reality behind its walls. In a sense, this duality that exists in the
suburbs becomes a symbol of the contradictions intrinsic to American society overalla
society in which the whitewashed, idyllic suburban spaces exist as a way to hide, or
avoid, the harsh realities of poverty, inequality, and oppression that existed in spaces such
as the large cities or the American South. Stephanie Coontz also addresses the
intersections between consumption in the suburbs and the invisibility of racial and ethnic
difference:

39

The message was clear: Buy these ranch houses, Hotpoint appliances, and
child-raising ideals; relate to your spouse like this; get a new car to wash
with your kids on Sunday afternoons; organize your dinners like thatand
you too can escape from the conflicts of race, class, and political witchhunts into harmonious families where father knows best, mother is never
bored or irritated, and teenagers rush to the dinner table each night, eager
to get their latest dose of parental wisdom. (The Way We Really Are 48)
Here we see that the suburbs did not only reflect the fear of the other, but that they also
became examples of an extreme national obsession with domesticity in response to the
fears of nuclear war presented by the Cold War with Russia. The resulting persistent
paranoia was present throughout the nation, including within the government, which
advised the American public to monitor their neighbors and to report any odd behavior
that could be attributed to ties to communism. The suburban space appears to exist as a
place where an imaginary idyllic world appears to be reality, yet the people who exist
within it, exemplified here by the Wheelers, are unable to successfully reconcile the
fundamental dishonesty that seems to be embedded within suburban life.
If we move from the historical perspective of Coontz and Tyler-May back into the
theoretical perspective on the postmodern put forth by Jameson, we see that for Jameson,
the move into the suburbs and the increasing emphasis on consumer goods and media
culture are, in fact, the essence of postmodernism. Jameson theorizes that the
postmodern movement is decidedly entangled with the evolution of our society into
what is often euphemistically called modernization, postindustrial or consumer society,
the society of the media or the spectacle, or multinational capitalism (Postmodernism

40

and Consumer Society 1962). Jameson goes on to claim that the descent of high
modernism into postmodernism is built upon not just a shift in the meaning or importance
of culture, but upon an actual loss of meaninga movement into a time where culture,
art, etc., lose their ability to be subversive because they are quickly devoured by the
masses. For Jameson, this is the result of our capitalist system: This new moment of
capitalism can be dated from the postwar boom in the United States in the late 1940s and
early 1950sThe 1960s are in many ways the key transitional period, a period in which
the new international order...is at one and the same time set in place and is swept and
shaken by its own internal contradictions and by external resistance (1962). So we see
that the postwar period was crucial to the creation of a completely different way of life,
especially in the middle class suburbs. In this new existence, as Jameson sees it, all
aspects of daily life become completely enmeshed within a capitalist system, so that art,
literature, television, family relationships, all become swallowed up by mass or popular
culture, where the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly
difficult to draw (1961). Therefore, if life becomes a sort of cyclical or revolutionary
creation both of and by mass and popular culture, it also engenders a crisis of identity and
meaninglessnessa world in which nothing can exist to subvert societal structures,
because they cannot escape being swallowed by the same structures that they are
attempting to subvert.
Indeed the subject of suburbia as a critical space in defining postwar America is
one that has been examined in literature, film, television, and literary criticism. In his
2012 article Contested Terrain: The Suburbs as Region, author Keith Wilhite explores
the role that the suburbs have played in the literary and cultural arenas: Suburban fiction

41

updates and revises long-standing regionalist approaches to local and global scales: the
charged insularity of the domestic sphere, the geographic containment of racial
difference, the repressive construction of a common national identity, and the imperial
reach of nation (619). For Wilhite, suburban literature has taken the place of American
regionalist literature in that it provides a contested terrain for evolving US demographics
and shifting ideations of American identity (619). For the purposes of this project, this
emphasis on the suburbs as a key component in the construction of both individual and
national identity is crucial to deconstructing the meaning of Revolutionary Road as a
disruption and subversion to a narrative in the specific temporal space in which the
narrative was occurring. In this way, it can be read as an attempt to rupture the faade of
the suburbs from within. In other words, it is an attempt to locate the truth within the
performance. Revolutionary Road therefore offers to expose the strict constructedness
and falsity, reinforced and perpetuated by media and the government, of the suburb as the
center of American life.
For the Wheelers the only way to address the isolation and dissatisfaction they
feel with their lives is to escape. For them, the domestic space has become so
overwrought with tension and anxiety that they must seek alternative spaces in order to
save themselves. Still, however, their fantasies of escape to Europe are ultimately no
more than a failed attempt at dealing with their situation. For the reader, the idea of
Europe is obviously doomed from the beginning, and hence we are left to turn each page
with a growing sensation of trepidation and pity as we cringe at the alarming selfdeception taking place between them. For the Wheelers, the only way of escaping the

42

isolation of the suburban environment is by leaving it, as we see here in Aprils drastic
speech about the dangers of their lives:
Because you see I happen to think this is unrealistic. I think its
unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working...at a job he cant
stand, coming home to a house he cant stand in a place he cant stand
either, to a wife whos equally unable to stand the same things, living
among a bunch of frightened littlemy God, Frank, I dont have to tell
you whats wrong with this environmentremember what you said about
the whole idea of suburbia being to keep reality at bay? (Yates 48)
So, we see the idea of Europe, which first came into play during Aprils performance as
Gabby, is positioned here as a space in which Frank and April will be able to escape not
only the daily tedium of their jobs and lives, but also as a place in which they will be able
to stop pretending. Frank and April believe that suburbia is meant to keep reality at bay
and, thus, they want to move into an environment where the sense of containment and
isolationism is absent. To them, Paris stands as the answer to not just their marital
problems, but indeed to all of their problems. In Paris, they will be not have to
participate (or so they think) in mundane cocktail hours, comply with strict social roles,
produce awful renditions of depressing plays, or drive on desolate highways ordering
them to consume. It is a panacea for the ills that have plagued them since they resigned
themselves to suburban life. Of course, the dream of Europe as a means of escape merely
becomes another lie to anticipatea lie that allows them to continue to ignore any of the
actual issues that are plaguing them. Here, Yates critique of 1950s life runs deeper than
that of the culture surrounding the suburban landscape. It also points back to a

43

fundamental lack of self-awareness that allowed people to live out isolated lives plagued
with anxiety and resentment.
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road offers a unique perspective on the myth of the
perfect suburban American family in that it is created during the period that it is
criticizing. Therefore, it can be read as an attempt at puncturing the mythologies that
pervade the era, or pulling back the curtain on the anxieties that actually simmered just
behind the picket fences and freshly painted doors. Revolutionary Road highlights the
performativity and conformity that disguised the utter discomfort and anxiety of suburban
life during the middle of the twentieth century. If Coontz and Tyler-May offer us a
historical redefinition of life during that era, Yates offers us a disturbing vision of just
how damaging the denial of the realities of life could be. In other words, Yates novel
offers us a jarring, emotional, creative glimpse into the truths that Coontz is attempting to
tell her contemporary audience.
Here, the question of the power of nostalgia again becomes intriguingly obvious.
If Yates, among others, was able to tear through the faade of idyllic suburbia through his
relentless portrayals of Frank and April Wheeler in 1961, why was it necessary for
historical scholars such as Stephanie Coontz and Elaine Tyler-May to attempt to
deconstruct the suburban ideal so many years later? What is it that is so powerful about
the vision of the perfect suburban American family that it continues to dominate our
cultural imagination? My intention in the next chapter is to provide a thorough analysis
of the thematic elements of Yates text so that the analysis may be used to respond to my
larger questions regarding nostalgia, consumer culture, and our need to romanticize the
past. If we are able to momentarily pull back the curtain to reveal truths about our past

44

that may not fall in line with our nostalgia about it, then why does it seem that we are
unable to maintain that truth? The next chapter of this project therefore seeks to examine
the contradictions that remain in the national consciousness with regard to the postwar
era, contradictions that are both magnified and interrogated through the television series
Mad Men.

45

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE ADVERTISED: MAD MEN AND THE

COMMODIFICATION OF A CULTURE
Yates Revolutionary Road depicts the internal conflicts and crises created by an
artificially inscribed code of family, community, and domesticity in 1950s America, a
code that was produced, re-created, and reinforced through national narratives that played
out through the widespread consumption of television sitcoms and the advertisements
that supported them. As we have previously examined, the relationship between mass
consumerism and the nationalistic narratives of the Cold War-era United States was
extremely intertwined. As television sets moved rapidly into the center of suburban
existence, they also became the center of gravity drawing suburban American families
together. In other words, the television acted as a means to create an artificially
centralized family structure in that it acted as a sort of common ground upon which the
family could enjoy a shared experience. Besides simply operating as a force to pull the
family together, it also became the author of the idea of the ideal family, an ideal that
was constantly reinforced through the television shows and advertisements that the
average American family consumed daily. Stephanie Coontz details the effects of
television and advertising on the average suburban American family in her book chapter
What We Really Miss about the Fifties:

46

At the time, everyone knew that shows such as Donna Reed, Ozzie and
Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, and Father Knows Best were not the way
families really wereThey watched them to see how families were
supposed to liveThe sitcoms were simultaneously advertisements,
etiquette manuals, and how to lessons for a new way of organizing
marriage and child raising. (The Way We Really Are 63)
We see here that the television, along with the advertisements that promoted consumption
as validation of the American ideal, becomes more than a form of entertainment. It
becomes a guidebook for the proper way to live the American life. So we can see that
the culture of performance and conformity that plagued the suburban neighborhoods such
as Revolutionary Road can be traced back to the cultural productions that promoted a
specific family and social order. Mad Men, therefore, can be read as an attempt to revisit the past in order to disrupt and re-direct the narrative created by the advertising of
the era by projecting the narrative structure back onto its originators.
Mad Men, therefore, is particularly compelling because it seeks to portray an
American era in which consumption and dissemination of images were reaching new
heights by focusing its gaze on the men who manufactured the images and created the
desire to consume. Therefore, where Revolutionary Road portrays the failure of the
narrative of the suburban ideology, Mad Men allows us to witness the creation of the
ideologythe ways in which marketing and consumption develop a stronghold on the
American consciousness by disseminating the idea that to consume is to be a good
American, to conform to strict social roles is to conquer the threats to our American way
of life, and to create an ideal family space is the epitome of the American dream. Where

47

Revolutionary Road depicts the failure of the so-called American Dream, Mad Men
unveils the myth behind the dream; it represents the ways in which the culture industry
capitalizes on the failures of the families who consume by allowing them to think that if
they simply consume more, they may be able to overcome their anxieties, their
unhappiness, their overall dissatisfaction with the tedium of everyday life.
So, as Jameson noted, the substantial shift that occurred in postwar society was
characterized by a shift into a new media society. The break that, for Jameson, signifies
the beginning of the postmodern era therefore partially hinges upon the marked
difference in the ways that society began to consume media. For Jameson, what becomes
known as the postmodern is characterized by New types of consumption; planned
obsolescence; an ever more rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes; the penetration
of advertising, television and the media generally to a hitherto unparalleled degree
throughout society (Postmodernism and Consumer Society 1974). Therefore the
subject matter of Mad Men is of particular interest in that it attempts to re-visit the early
1960s with a self-conscious focus toward the orchestrators of the myths that were
pervading society at the time. To express it plainly: If the Wheelers are victims, the
admen of Sterling Cooper (and eventually Draper Pryce) are the perpetrators. The
trouble here lies in the fact that while the admen are the agents of the culture industry,
complete with matching suits and hats, they, and their families, are also existing within
the hegemonic social structures that their work reinforces. Thus, the characters on the
series operate in a sort of dual existence of producers and consumers, much like the series
itself does.

48

Because Mad Men depicts the late 1950s and early 1960s advertising world as the
primary content of the show, it also occupies a convergent space between the worlds of
cultural producers and consumers. Indeed, Mad Men cannot escape from the paradoxical
nature of its subject. By illustrating the morally ambiguous nature of the advertising
world, the television show is also replicating it, by engaging in embedded forms of
advertising as well as more overt ones. For example, one of Sterling Coopers potential
fictional clients, American Airlines, has a new, real ad campaign in which Jon
Hamm, the actor who plays Don Draper, provides the voiceover. For viewers of Mad
Men, the effect is unmistakable: we are not merely listening to a celebrity voiced ad
campaign; we are clients, listening to a presentation by the amazingly talented Don
Draper of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Mad Men does not simply exist as a critical or
artistic representation of the advertising business; Mad Men is indeed in the business. If
we take Mad Mens very real role in the capitalist system into consideration, Adorno and
Horkheimers idea of the deception or concealment of the true motives of the culture
industry seems particularly relevant:
The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry.
The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees the world outside as an
extension of the film he has just left (because the latter is intent upon
reproducing the world of everyday perceptions), is now the producers
guideline. The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques duplicate
empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the
outside world is the straightforward continuation of that presented on the
screen. (65)

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Therefore, the flawless, or at least near flawless, technical skill with which Mad
Men portrays the ad world, as well as the past itself, also creates tension due to its
complicit participation in the culture industry that it purports to critique. Hence, when
Jon Hamm the actor accepts a job as the voiceover in an American Airlines ad, the
outside world does indeed become a continuation of what has been presented on screen as
art. American Airlines is not the only company to use Mad Men as inspiration for their
ad campaigns. Companies such as Banana Republic, BMW, Lincoln Motor Company,
and even Clorox have capitalized on the success of Mad Men with contemporary ad
campaigns inspired by the series. The layering of the critiques of the American consumer
industry on top of the participation in it blurs the lines between art and capitalism, an
almost perfect embodiment of Adorno and Horkheimers, as well as Jamesons,
criticisms of the culture industry. Indeed, as Jameson puts it Today the products
arediffused throughout the space and time of the entertainmentsegments as part of
the content, so thatit is sometimes not clear when the narrative segment has ended and
the commercial has begun (since the same actors appear in the commercial segment as
well) (Postmodernism 275). The result, for Mad Men, is that the show becomes the
embodiment of a fundamental split in the American psyche. The advertising
presentations on the show attempt to portray the inner workings of the advertising world,
and also show us that the men behind the ads are callous, damaged, deeply flawed
individuals who view every experience as potential fodder for the next great
advertisement. It would seem that this vision offers a clear, uncomplicated critique of
consumerism. Yet, at the same time, the show is enacting the very idea it is attempting to
resist. In other words, the vision of the past in Mad Men is one that illuminates the crisis

50

of identity that was imminent in an America that was careening toward an existence of
hopeless consumption. In this way the show also mirrors Jamesons idea that art is now
inseparable from advertising and commodity production: For one thing commodity
production and in particular our clothing, furniture, buildings, and other artifacts are now
intimately tied with styling changes which derive from artistic experimentation; our
advertising...is fed by postmodernism in all the arts and inconceivable without it
(Postmodernism and Consumer Society 1973). So here, the reflexivity of Mad Men is
again exposed as it operates at once as artistic expression, advertisement, critic of
consumer culture, and nostalgic inspiration for clothing, furniture, and interior design.
Indeed, nostalgia for the postwar time period is perhaps one of the most obvious
contradictions engendered by the production of Mad Men. On one hand, the series seeks
to expose the racism, sexism, and conservatism that pervaded the era; however, on the
other, it evokes powerful feelings of nostalgia, even in viewers who did not live during
the time period. So while the aesthetics of the series seem to create the desire to return to
the time, the content of the series seems to warn against that desire. Still, however, the
nostalgic impulse created by the series may cloud the message it is attempting to convey.
Therefore, the nostalgia engendered by the series is particularly interesting because it
seems to fulfill two seemingly oppositional impulses regarding the time period. One is
the impulse to romanticize an idealized vision of the past, while the other is the impulse
to expose the cracks and fissures that permeate that ideal.
Determining which impulse the series is ultimately successful in fulfilling has
indeed become a richly debatable subject among contemporary academics and critics. In
the introduction to the anthology Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style, and the

51

1960s, the debate over the issue of Mad Mens examination of the past as glib or
smug is discussed at length: ...the charge of smugness clings to Mad Men like the stale
odor of cigarettesThus, according to Sady Doyle in the Atlantic, Mad Men affords
viewers an illusion of moral superiority; and for Benjamin Schwarz...the show
encourages the condescension of posterity (Goodlad, Kaganovsky, and Rushing 5).
Therefore, one of the central questions regarding the re-construction of the past in Mad
Men becomes whether or not it is a productive re-construction in terms of interrogating
structures of oppression. Does it merely allow us to feel unjustifiably proud of ourselves
for recognizing and rejecting blatant racism, homophobia, and sexism? Or, does it cause
us to question these systems so that we might be better able to recognize them in our own
contemporary lives? It seems that whatever meaning the producers of the show may be
trying to create will ultimately be obscured by the way in which the viewer chooses to
perceive and reconstruct it in his or her own mind. Therefore, even the most obvious
critique of the oppressive mechanisms of the timeframe may be obscured to a viewer who
is more concerned with what dress Betty Draper is wearing in a given episode, an
impulse that is explored by fans who actually dress up as the characters and host themed
parties (15).
In her article on the fashion of Mad Men, Swing Skirts and Swinging Singles,
author Mabel Rosenheck evaluates this cultural re-enactment of the styles and aesthetics
of the past as a function of the series ability to take the sense of nostalgia from a vague
feeling of past-ness to a sharp and powerful manifestation of cultural memory. For
Rosenheck, Mad Mens strict attention to historical accuracy in the realms of style and
fashion allow it to move beyond a mere representation of the past, and instead into a

52

shared experience of collective memory: History fixes the past; memory emphasizes the
past as a dynamic, flexible, and usable part of everyday life. Yet these two concepts need
not be diametrically opposed...cultural memory is a field of cultural negotiation through
which different stories vie for a place in history. Sturkens alternative. . . lies in
presenting cultural memory and history as entangled rather than oppositional (34).
The aesthetic of Mad Men therefore becomes crucial to the way in which it is consumed
by the viewers in that it immerses them completely within the past. Rosenheck notes that
producer Scott Hornbacher says that accuracy to the period is of paramount importance
to all of us...because if its wrong...it compromises the ability for people to suspend their
disbelief (32). The conscious attempt to reproduce the past with obsessive accuracy
perpetuates the construction of images that reflect nostalgia and shared experiences as
culturally significant, even as it seems to allow us a sense of distance from the subject
matter it immerses us within. Therefore, it offers an intercessory space where we occupy
the past aesthetically even as we distance ourselves from it ideologically. The space
therefore becomes troubled by these oppositional impulses, as the distance we imagine is
not necessarily as significant as we think. For Jameson, this nostalgic impulse indicates
our pathological failure to deal with time and history (Postmodernism and Consumer
Society 1974). In other words, our inability to properly reconcile our past manifests
itself in these nostalgically reproduced images.
The temporal duality that Mad Men invokes differentiates it from Revolutionary
Road precisely because of its inability to be divorced from our relationship to the past.
Revolutionary Road was very much a product of the time and space where it originated,
and so as we read it today, we assign it the status of a cultural artifact. In other words, it

53

is firmly located at a specific point in time, and we assign it meaning based on that fact.
The distance that we feel when engaging with the text of Revolutionary Road is therefore
very real; so while we are still inclined to interpret it through a contemporary lens, we
can also see its depiction of suburban isolation unfold as a tangible record of the time and
space in which it was created. Mad Men, on the other hand, operates in such a manner
that it is not a record of a specific time, but rather an interpretation of one. It is an actual
re-writing of the past, and in that way it is an imposition on the past, an active agent that
seeks to deconstruct and re-form it in its own image. Thus, it becomes an extremely
complex collection of text and image from which to make meaning in that it is incapable
from separating itself from the past that it attempts to critique. In fact, even Don
Drapers fractured identity and mysterious past are revealed to the viewer in abrupt,
disorienting temporal shifts in the narrative. So the viewer is constantly reminded of
Dons failure to properly reconcile his own past, a fact that is reflective of his own
pathological failure to deal with time and history (Jameson, Postmodernism and
Consumer Society 1974). In other words, to watch Mad Men is to move from the
contemporary, into the early 1960s, and then once again (and again) into Dons past, so
that the viewers must constantly attempt to re-locate themselves into the appropriate
temporal space. Still, this attempt is doomed to fail because we are unable to separate
ourselves from our actual space in time. If we add to this the fact that the series is always
in progress, in that the characters themselves are constantly changing as they move
forward through time in the series itself, we are left with a nearly complete disruption of
chronological time; we are displaced. This displacement, coupled with the fact that Don
Draper conceals his true past by lying to everyone in his life, reflects and illuminates the

54

failure to properly deal with time and history, which Jameson claims is an essential
characteristic of the postmodern condition.
Indeed, for Jameson, the very medium of television itself functions as a means for
the viewer to escape real time, and delve into an alternate space where temporality can
be manipulated:
We all know, but always forget, that the fictive scenes and conversations
on the movie screen radically foreshorten reality as the clock ticks are
nevercoterminous with the putative length of such moments in real life,
or in real time: something a filmmaker can always uncomfortably remind
us of by returning occasionally to real time...Is it possible then, that
fiction is what is in question here and that it can be defined essentially as
the construction of just such fictive and foreshortened
temporalitieswhich are then substituted for a real time we are thereby
enabled to forget? (Postmodernism 74)
Here we see the connection between Mad Men, the past, and nostalgia become
exceedingly complex and complicated. If the very definition of fiction is the construction
of fictive temporalities that allow us to escape our own real time, then our relationship
to a television show such as Mad Men becomes fraught with tension between the
contemporary and the past. In other words, as we watch, we are experiencing a fictive
time that attempts to depict a former actual time, as a means to escape our own current
reality. However, this complex relationship seems to result in the false nostalgia that the
show appears to deconstruct. Thus, our inherent desire to experience fictive time as an

55

escape from real time reifies feelings of nostalgia that may cause the viewer to ignore the
larger critiques that the show is attempting to make.
The fact that Mad Men occupies multiple temporal spaces also makes it reflective
of Benjamins ideas of mechanical reproduction: Even the most perfect reproduction
of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique
existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art
determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence
(1168). Mad Men is a reproduction of a specific time and space, but it has rewritten that
time and space onto the present. Thus, it affords us the opportunity to reexamine flawed
methods of thinking and existing, yet it also runs the risk of reproducing the flaws rather
than deconstructing them.
The danger of this reproduction is especially evident in episode 12, The
Mountain King, from the second season of the series. The episode features a very
unsettling scene where Joan Harris, head secretary at Sterling Cooper, is raped by her
husband-to-be. In an online Atlantic article entitled Mad Mens Very Modern Sexism
Problem, author Sady Doyle explores the disturbing audience reactions to the show:
Joan Holloway was raped by her fianca crime that almost certainly wouldnt be
recognized as such in 1963Whats astounding is that people will say You know that
episode where Joan sort of got raped? said Christina Hendricks (the actress who plays
Joan) of fan reactions. For Doyle, the idea that this act is so easily misinterpreted is
indicative of the fact that misogyny and sexism are very much still alive: Our inability to
identify misogyny, even on a show that presents it so melodramatically, points to the
persistence of sexism (5). In other words, the fact that sexism, racism, and homophobia

56

persist in our contemporary world can lead us to misinterpret the messages that Mad Men
is attempting to send. The disconnect that is formed here between the viewer and what
occurs within the world of Mad Men therefore highlights the risk of the self-conscious reimagining of the pastthe fact that an attempt to illuminate the flaws and problems of
the era can indeed perpetuate the problems rather than criticizing them. Nostalgia
therefore plays a key role in altering or disfiguring attempts at critique in that it clouds
the ability to see it. If we as viewers become fascinated and enraptured with the way
things were by fetishizing fashion, style, or even behaviors such as drinking while at
work, then we may fail to recognize the more serious cultural critiques that the show
portrays.
Nostalgia serves multiple, contradictory functions in Mad Menit is an ever
present emotion that is used, commodified, and colonized as a method to sell products
and please clients, which seems to be one of the primary ways that the producers of the
show are attempting to deconstruct it. By highlighting the use of nostalgia to sell
products, the shows creators are also illustrating the paradox of advertising and
consumerismby purchasing a product we are attempting to re-create an old emotion by
embracing something new. In Irene Smalls article Against Depth: Looking at Surface
through the Kodak Carousel, she examines the relationship of Dons Kodak Carousel
advertising pitch and his ability to turn surface into depth through creative vision: I call
attention to Dons Kodak Carousel pitch both for its double articulation of nostalgia and
because the magical transmutation of material thing into dematerialized image seated
literally at the heart of the slide projector encapsulates much of what is at stake in Mad
Mens imagination of its own relationship to avant-garde art and the culture industry of

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the 1960s (92). Small goes on to explore some of the thematic elements of the
relationship of art to advertising during the 1960s. Like Small, I would like to focus here
on the idea of the articulation of nostalgia and the way that it operates within the
episode. However, I believe that the episode is less concerned with the transformation
from material into image and more concerned with the idea that the nostalgic image was
never anything but immaterial.
The episode The Wheel focuses on the passage of time, the creation and/or
denial of memories, and a fundamental inability to confront the past in a way that will
help to productively deal with the present. In the beginning of the episode, when Don
informs Betty that he will not be attending Thanksgiving at her familys house, her reply
regarding their children is What about them? What about their childhood memories?
(The Wheel). Don, unpersuaded, is completely dismissive of her line of reasoning.
Later in the episode, as Don ponders the creation of a campaign for Kodaks new, round
slide projector, Don watches old movies of his wife and children. He subsequently
decides to call his brother Adam, who he rejected months earlier due to the fact that he
did not want to address his actual past as Dick Whitman, the identity that he attempted to
erase after the Korean War. He discovers that his brother has hung himself. Dons
refusal to confront his own past and his brothers resulting death indicate the pathological
aspect of nostalgia that Jameson discusses; Don is able to understand and evoke the idea
of nostalgia for his clients, while he simultaneously reveals an inability to effectively deal
with his own personal time and history.
As Don presents his idea to Kodak, he speaks of two fundamental aspects of
advertising. The first is that the most important idea is always new. It is newness

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that creates a desire in the consumer. Additionally, he relates the idea that there is a
deeper bond that a person can feel with a product, the feeling of nostalgia, which Don
proclaims is the pain from an old wound, delicate but potent, which goes around and
around, always circling back to a place where we are loved (The Wheel). As Don
presents the idea of nostalgia, he clicks slowly and deliberately through his own family
pictures, creating a touching montage of moments from his life with his own family, who
are, in reality, simultaneously boarding a train to spend Thanksgiving without him. In the
final scenes of the episode, we see Don arrive home early enough to catch them, inform
them that he will come with them after all, and be greeted as a hero in an overtly
saccharine display of familial warmth and affection. The viewer is made to believe that
this is the actual final scene, and it is convincing somehow, despite the fact that we know
the truththat Betty has actually been obsessing over Dons infidelity throughout the
episode to the point of informing neighborhood children of how extremely sad she is.
Of course, the scene is ultimately revealed to be a fantasy, just as Dons carefully
displayed slideshow was a fantasy. Don actually comes home to a dark, empty house and
slumps down in his staircase as Bob Dylans Dont Think Twice begins to play over
the scene. So, while this episode seeks to illuminate the inability to properly create and
experience memory as a function of identity for the character of Don Draper, it seems to
at the same time criticize the emotion nostalgia itself in an attempt to deconstruct the
nostalgia brought on by the series. Indeed, even the song at the end of the episode is
effective for inducing a melancholic nostalgia in the viewer/listener, even as its lyrics
reflect the uselessness of re-visiting the past: It aint no use to sit and wonder why
babe/itll never do somehow (Dylan). The fact that the episode is the last one of the first

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season of the show is also quite telling, in that it operates as a warning about the false
nostalgic ideal, and reveals that allowing oneself to become consumed by that false
nostalgia will not lead to fulfillment, but only disillusionment.
Additionally, Dons description of nostalgia as something that goes around and
around, circling back upon itself, as the title of the show and the Kodak carousel itself
also suggest, highlights the danger of the cyclical nature of nostalgia and the past. If one
is condemned to this cyclical motion, constantly caught up in the past, he or she is also
rendered incapable of moving forward; he or she is trapped in an inescapable, perpetual
motion. This cyclical description also seems to communicate the awareness that it is
impossible to escape nostalgia, even while attempting to disrupt and deconstruct it.
Indeed, Don has made every effort to forcibly remove himself from his past, yet he is
unable to fully do so. We will always be seduced by the possibility of the past, just as we
were seduced by the image of Don being greeted by a happy, loving family despite all of
the evidence we had seen to contradict this possibility. Lastly, it seems that the idea of
the wheel, or The Carousel as it comes to be known, reinforces the paradoxical nature
of the new consumer society that Jameson analyzes and that Revolutionary Road
criticizesthe fact that we obsessively look to the new in order to fulfill the void left by
the old. We are constantly seeking to fulfill our needs and desires with what is new in
order to re-create emotions and experiences based in nostalgia.
Yet another implication of The Wheel rests in its relation to the idea of the
image as mechanical reproduction, which is decidedly obvious within the slideshow
scene, as images of Dons family, images that are indeed extremely separated from the
time and space in which they were created (a fact made clear by the smiles on the faces of

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the members of the Draper family), are able to be reproduced and manipulated to serve a
function that Don seems to recognize as uniquely powerful. The division between the
nostalgic aura presented by the slides as opposed to the aura that Benjamin discusses as
a phenomenon unique to a piece of art that exists within the actual space in which it is
created is made clear by a late night conversation between Harry and Don. As they begin
to discuss what the benefit of the carousel projector is, Harry describes the appeal of the
mechanical photography as well as the persistence of images: I took pictures...the
machinery is definitely part of the fun. Its mechanical. I was always fascinated by the
cave paintings...17,000 years old...I thought it was someone reaching through the stone,
right to us. I was here (The Wheel). For Harry, the cave paintings functioned as
works of art embedded in ritual and having their own unique aura. For Don, however,
the I was here quality that Harry mentions is simply another marker of the power of
nostalgia, a marker that he can reproduce. So if Benjamin says that to pry an object
from its shell, to destroy its aura is the mark of a perception whose sense of the universal
equality of things has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique
object by means of reproduction (1171), then Don displays an acute awareness of this
possibility. But for Don, the ultimate goal of that extraction is simply to evoke an
emotional response that can be manipulated into more consumption. For Don, moving
reality into image creates what Jameson calls the fragmentation of time into a series of
perpetual presents (Postmodernism and Consumer Society 1974). Thus, we are never
able to truly understand the past, as it is constantly positioned as the present.
Thus, it seems that we are unable to envision the future without fantasizing about
and romanticizing the past, and that this romanticization clouds our ability to properly

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confront the present. In addition to directly confronting nostalgia, as they did in the
episode The Wheel, the shows creators are also able to deconstruct the power of
nostalgia through the purposeful exposure of oppressive ideologies such as racism,
sexism, homophobia, and classism. In this sense, the producers seem to be intent on
exposing what Coontz identifies the nostalgia trap (The Way We Never Were), our
tendency to gloss over the harmful realities of our past in order to engage in a
romanticized narrative of it. In the romanticized version of the past, and of the American
dream, the reality that we can see peeking through the cracks of postmodern novels,
theory, and cultural criticism becomes muted and hidden in an American imagination that
has been warped by materialism, advertising, and popular culture. In this way, our
rendering of the suburban experience in the 1950s and 60s mirrors the landscape of the
suburbs themselves. We seem to insist on protecting and isolating ourselves from the
actual historical truth of the era. By focusing on happy families, white picket fences, and
friendly neighbors, we can wash away the sexism, racism, oppression, alcoholism, and
mental illnesses that permeated the era.
Jameson also confronts our need to romanticize what he says is not the 1950s,
which is an actual numerical space in time, but the fifties, a nostalgia-distorted
perspective on an era that we insist on looking back on in the wrong way. He
acknowledges that the actual high art and criticism of the time period attempts to
criticize it properly, but that the mass culture that we insist upon returning to is nothing
but false images, reflections of something that never actually existed in reality: This is
clearly however, to shift from the realities of the 1950s to the representation of that rather
different thing, the fifties, a shift which obligates us in addition to underscore the

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cultural sources of all the attributes with which we have endowed the period, many of
which...derive from its own television programs...its own representation of itself
(Postmodernism 281). Here we see that the idea of the image becomes of utmost
importance in terms of nostalgia and cultural memory. It is not reality that persists in the
collective imagination; it is the image. Mad Men seems to attempt to disrupt this impulse
by tearing down the image and reconstructing a new one, but this new image would still
cease to exist without the prior one existing first. Still, Mad Men at least represents an
attempt to disrupt the imagean attempt to exist as what Jameson would classify as one
of the many forms of protest against the fiftiesagainst the...complacency, against the
sealed self-content of the small (white, middle-class) town, against the conformist and the
family-centered ethnocentrism of a prosperous United States learning to
consumewhose immediacy has by now largely lost its edge (Postmodernism 279). So
although Mad Men operates as a highly complicated piece of media, it still also functions
as a collection of images that possibly have the ability to puncture our already highly
mediated feelings of nostalgia for a time period where images became ubiquitous and
powerful, and where the need to live up to those images was crucial.
If we return to the themes of performance and conformity that pervade
Revolutionary Road, the Mad Men episode entitled A Night to Remember is of
particular interest. The episode not only exemplifies the highly performative nature of
Bettys role as wife of a company man, but it also offers a glimpse into the highly
measured methods of manipulating the American housewife in terms of advertising
specific products. A Night to Remember therefore epitomizes the reduction of life

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events and daily existence to being meaningful only in terms of creating opportunities for
suburban consumption.
A Night to Remember plays with the deconstruction of performed roles
throughout the episode, and it opens with a scene of Betty, appearing competent, resolute,
and content as she participates in her weekly horseback ride. Meanwhile, Don and his
associates are discussing their plans to market the new, imported beer Heineken to the
suburban housewives who do all the purchasing for the house. The dichotomy between
the subservient image of the suburban housewife and her actual power is exposed here; a
housewife is perceived as a compliant supporter of her husband, but in a consumer
society, the person with the most purchasing power is the person who holds the reins.
Therefore, for Don, learning how to successfully manipulate his wife is not only a means
for him to carry out his marital infidelity, it is also his job. This is perhaps the most
significant difference between Revolutionary Road and Mad Men, in that in the former,
the characters performances are simply carried out day after day, whereas in Mad Men,
we see the actual orchestration of performance. We see the ways in which advertising
executives utilize performance in order to manipulate their clients and the masses, but we
also see the ways in which they are able to see through performance because it is they
who created the image that the masses are attempting to emulate.
As the episode progresses, the divide between performance and reality becomes
drastically emphasized, as Betty organizes a meticulously crafted around the world
themed dinner party in order to entertain Dons guests from the city. She presents a wellrehearsed description of each course and its corresponding country, concluding her
presentation with a nod to an ice bucket filled with the imported Heineken. Don and his

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dinner guest Duck Phillips laugh, as Duck cannot believe that Betty was actually
unknowingly seduced by Dons marketing campaign, and Betty is visibly disheartened.
Here, Bettys expression of disillusionment is not just at being exposed as a gullible
housewife regarding the Heineken campaign, but at Dons manipulation of her overall.
After the guests leave, Betty is compelled to finally confront him about the lie
that he insists on living. Again, the duality of Don and his life as an adman is exposed.
The lie is in fact his truthhe is the embodiment of dishonesty; he creates, manipulates,
and lives in a world where everything is a piece in his lie. Therefore, when Betty accuses
him of living a lie, she is not just addressing his marital infidelity; she is addressing his
essence as a human being. Here, her resentment at manipulation becomes an attempt to
re-assert her own agency over the manipulation. It illustrates her attempting to subvert
her established role as submissive, compliant, predictable housewifeshe will not be the
wife who predictably picks up the strategically placed Heineken at the neighborhood
grocery storeshe will instead re-assert her authority over her own life by showing Don
that she may know him better than he knows herhe has underestimated her. But on a
larger level, it also exposes the resentment and anger of a population who is constantly
pushed into consumptiona suburban society that has been constructed with the express
purpose of consuming goods and driving the economy forward. Dons existence is
dependent on this system, and therefore he is aware of something that most are notour
lives are being manipulated to comply with this goal. A Night to Remember represents
a moment where Betty rejects the performance, where she refuses to cooperate in the lie.
Bettys physical appearance becomes a telling marker of the dismantling of the
vision of Betty as perfect housewife here as well. Betty appears beautiful and

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impeccably dressed at the beginning of the dinner party as she presents her special
around the world menu. As the episode progresses and her disillusionment grows, she
does not change out of the dress she wore to the dinner party, and becomes increasingly
disheveled, drunk, and angry. Mabel Rosenheck discusses the deconstruction of feminine
performance in the episode in the article Swing Skirts and Swinging Singles:
Betty wears a spaghetti strap New Look gown in white silk with blue,
green, and yellow polka dots. Yet the innocent femininity of the dressis
belied by the fury with which Betty approaches Don after the party...The
next day the dress (which she has slept in) wrinkles and the straps fall off
her shoulders as she too comes apart while searching frantically for proof
of Dons infidelity. The dress no longer conveys the faade of idealized
femininity, but now reflects the anxiety it sought to contain. (88)
So here we see that Bettys appearance becomes a visual deconstruction of the myth of
the perfect suburban housewife that persists throughout the episode, which in turn
becomes a perfect embodiment of the highly constructed false suburban ideal that
Stephanie Coontz attempts to deconstruct: The anxiety that lay hidden in the suburbs of
1950s America was all the more suffocating due to the pressure among families to
maintain the appearance of domestic bliss. Coontz quotes author Benita Eislers
recollections of the first evidence of fractures in this idealized portrait: As college
classmates became close friends, I heard sagas of life at home that were Gothic horror
stories. Behind the hedges and driveways of upper-middle-class suburbia were tragedies
of madness, suicide, andmost prevalent of allchronic and severe alcoholism (The
Way We Never Were 32). These fissures are illustrated not just in Betty, but in the scene

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of the dinner party itself, in which one of the guests is a drunken wife who misses her
chair at the dinner table, and another is a recovering alcoholic who is clearly judged by
the others for whom drinking is par for the course.
A Night to Remember is also significant with regard to Joan Holloway, as she
is briefly promoted to a different position with the company, one in which she is assigned
to read television scripts so that she can ensure the advertisements do not unintentionally
conflict with storylines. Joan executes her new duties beautifully, and impresses the
clients with her knowledge of how to monopolize on the scripts. Still, by the end of the
episode, she is forced back into her old position as secretary, and a man is hired to fill the
position instead. Here again, a womans physical appearance is emphasized when Joan,
known for her hourglass figure, and using sexuality as power, rubs at the grooves left by
her bra straps as she undresses at the end of her disappointing day. Again, Rosenheck
points to fashion as a construction of the performative aspects of femininity here: The
story line ends with a disappointed Joan, undressing at home, rubbing her shoulder where
deep red marks show the physical and emotional cost of her femininity (91). The
subtlety of this moment is misleading, as it is easily read as an understated critique of the
suffocating and painful constraints placed on women during the time period; but it also
alludes to the power of manipulation.
Joan, just like Betty, attempted to re-assert feminine authority by using her voice
to participate in the manipulations of the culture industry. Her failure indicates her own
misinterpretation of the world in which she lives, a world that she thought she thoroughly
understood. Joan is not allowed to participate in the manipulations of Sterling Cooper;
she is one of its manipulations. The company used and deceived her much in the way

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that Don used and deceived Betty, but Joans situation is more inescapable. Here, Joans
ability to operate so flawlessly within the male-dominated world has backfired. Her
ability to mask her identity in order to obtain agency has also allowed her to be perceived
as completely content within her assigned role. Joan, like Betty, has been
underestimated, but Betty has the option of divorce. Joan is firmly placed back where
she belongs (A Night), as a secretary.
A Night to Remember is key to interrogating themes of performativity,
desperation, feminine disillusionment, and pervasive consumerism that seek to disrupt the
traditional narrative of the time frame. Still, there are moments in the episode that seem
to undermine the effort to critique the era. Betty is depicted in such an unflattering light
at times that it becomes difficult to read her suffering as emblematic of the oppression
intrinsic to her lifestyle. For example, in a scene that attempts to puncture the illusion of
the perfect domestic housewife that Betty is attempting to construct for Dons dinner
guests, Betty violently erupts in anger while trying to fix a dining room chair. While it is
clear that the purpose of the scene is to undercut the performative nature of Bettys role
as perfect wife and party host, it also causes the viewer to interpret her as volatile and
unstable. Indeed, Betty is at times portrayed so viciously that her performance tends to
evoke in the viewer feelings of sympathy for her unfaithful husband rather than her.
In addition, the fact that the episode functions as an advertisement for Heineken
points to the strange duality of the series itself. Mad Men ostensibly acts as a critique of
the advertising world, even while it is also an active participant within it. Therefore,
while Mad Men seems able to poke holes in a nostalgic rendering of the postwar time
period by exposing dysfunction and oppression, it also seems unable to escape its own

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role in the culture industry. So, if Betty is upset as being used as a target for an
advertising campaign, it would seem that the viewer of the series is in a similar
predicament. In a June 2013 New Yorker online article entitled The Weird Recursive
Mad Men Ads, Ian Crouch points to the issue of product placement and its relationship
to the series, specifically referencing A Night to Remember as the moment when the
question of artistic integrity and in-show advertising became irrelevant: In some ways
worrying about whether the advertising of real products diminishes the fictional world of
Mad Men is wasted energy at this point. It either ceased being an issue or permanently
became one, when an entire episode was structured around Heineken which made a
placement deal with the shows producers. Crouchs two completely oppositional
interpretations herethat [product placement] either ceased being an issue or
permanently became onepoint to the sometimes irreconcilable contradictions intrinsic
to the series.
In fact, just as Mad Men both deconstructs and reinscribes nostalgia for an era that
was wrought with problems and crises, it also acts as both critic and participant in the
culture industry as a whole. The fact that the series is critically acclaimed and held to the
standards of art rather than mere entertainment evokes resentment in viewers similar to
the disdain that Betty felt at being a target or pawn for the larger mechanism of the
culture industry. For Adorno and Horkheimer, however, this question of whether art is
compromised by consumerism has been rendered insignificant by the culture industry:
If one branch of art follows the same formula as one with a very different
medium and content...if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is
crudely adapted for a film soundtrack in the same way as a Tolstoy novel

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is garbled in a film script: then the claim that this is done to satisfy...the
public is no more than hot air. We are closer to the facts if we explain
these phenomena as inherent in theapparatus, which, down to its last
cog, itself forms part of the economic mechanism of selection. In addition
there is the agreementof all executive authorities not to produce or
sanction anything that in any way differs from their own rules, their own
ideas about consumers, or above all themselves. (1225)
So we see that, for Adorno and Horkheimer, the content of a film or television show is
unimportant, as it is merely a vehicle in order to achieve the ultimate goal of creating
consumption. Read in this context, Mad Mens critiques of consumerism are rendered
powerless, as they are unable to communicate anything other than a message that has
been constructed from within the culture industry itself. So, just as Betty is aware of
Dons manipulations yet still readily conforms to the role of both housewife and
consumer, and does so in exactly the way he predicts, the viewer of Mad Men participates
in a critique of advertising and consumerism even as they are being manipulated as well.
The final line of the passage above reinforces the idea that conformity to prescribed roles
is a fundamental aspect of the orchestrators of the culture industrynothing will differ
from their rules, their ideas, or themselves. A Night to Remember, therefore, is a
layered and complex vision of conformity and performance intrinsic to domestic
suburban life in the postwar, postmodern era.
Because suburban life, as well as Dons career on Madison Avenue, creates strict
and oppressive roles for the characters of Mad Men to exist within, the characters on the
series, like the Wheelers, seek alternate landscapes as a means of escaping the

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containment imposed on them through images of the ideal of suburbia. Unlike the
Wheelers, the characters in Mad Men seem able to escape their identities and existences,
at least temporarily, especially because of the nature of the serialized narrative structure
of the show. In other words, whereas the first two seasons of the series focus on a mostly
clearly cut dichotomy between Madison Avenue and the suburbs, subsequent seasons
often feature episodes that take place in alternate, more liberal, or more anonymous
spaces where the characters are able to shed aspects of their identities. It seems that these
episodes serve to offer a means of providing a sort of counter-narrative that acts in
opposition to the insular containment culture of the suburbs. In addition, they establish
spaces that are not the city or the suburbsspaces that resist being fixed or totalized as
either/or, spaces that exist independently of a more well-established dichotomy. These
spaces offer glimpses of the resistance to societal norms and structures because they are
neither related to the domestic nor the career; they are places where the rules do not
apply.
The episode The Jet Set also occurs in the second season of the series, three
episodes after A Night to Remember, and Don and Bettys relationship has rapidly
deteriorated. Don and his co-worker Pete Campbell take a trip to California to meet with
potential clients. California is immediately portrayed in stark contrast to the scenes set in
New York City and Ossining. The scenes are brightly lit, the extras are all dressed
beautifully, and everyone is so tan that they appear to be glowing. At the beginning of
the episode, Don has his mind set on work, resisting Petes urges to even take a swim in
the hotel pool. The next day, we see Don and Pete viewing a presentation by a defense
company about nuclear missiles. The presentation directly references cold-war tactics

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against Russia, threatening that one of its missiles would have the effect of three
Nagasakis (The Jet Set). The scene, which specifically references cold-war paranoia
and containment culture, immediately precedes a scene where Don spontaneously decides
to skip the rest of the convention and go to Palm Springs with a young woman named
Joy, who propositions him in the hotel lobby. Dons decision to leave immediately after
the defense presentation implies a rejection of not just his responsibilities to Sterling
Cooper, but also a rejection of a way of life in which he must conform to the expectations
of the cold-war era. Don has no desire to discuss how many Russians will be killed by
nuclear warheads; he silently rejects the status quo, and decides to join the free-spirited
Joy and her mysteriously wealthy Bohemian friends.
Once Don arrives at the spacious, beautiful California home where Joy is staying
with a strange collection of people, to whom she refers as nomads, he becomes less and
less grounded in his own identity, mostly because he is unable to establish fixed identities
for the people who he encounters. Joys use of the word nomads here serves to
emphasize a lack of structure as well as a sense of placelessness. Don is unable to
reconcile the freedom that Joy and her cohorts enjoy. He incessantly repeats the
questions: Who are you? What do you people do? I guess you are all well-off? (The
Jet Set). At one point he becomes so disoriented by the lack of traditional and rigid
social structures that he actually loses control of his physical body and faints. Upon
waking up, he is told that he has heat exhaustion, a fact that further cements his status
as a fish-out-of-water. Joy gives him a new set of clothing, and he quickly adopts a more
relaxed, yet still confused demeanor. At dinner, Joys vaguely European housemates
play a game in which each person has to name a place that begins with the last letter of

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the previously named place. The result is each guest of the dinner party yelling out the
names of exotic cities all over the world, thereby emphasizing the existences of places
outside of New York City and its suburbs. That night, just before Don is about to go to
bed with Joy, he demands once moreWho are you? to which she simply replies Im
Joy (The Jet Set). So we see that her identity is not fixedit is a feeling, an emotion,
something for Don to experience, rather than an identity strictly assigned to a person who
has a rigid social role to which she must conform.
The stark difference in the lives of the people of Sterling Cooper in comparison to
the people at Dons dinner party is further emphasized when the episodes narrative
returns to the events at the ad agency. Peggy has a date to see Bob Dylan in the Village
with one of the newer copywriters, Kurt, who is originally from Germany. When the
other men in the creative department begin to tease Peggy and Kurt about their date, Kurt
promptly and matter-of-factly proclaims that he is homosexual and has no interest in
Peggy. Of course, the entire office is utterly shocked and dumbfounded by the
revelation, including Sal, who is closeted himself. After Kurt leaves, his friend Smitty
shrugs the incident off, saying Hes from Europe. Its different there (The Jet Set),
once again reestablishing the idea that alternate spaces allow for the rejection of the strict
moral codes and gender roles of postwar America.
Of course, the men of Sterling Cooper quickly reject Kurts subversive lifestyle
by saying I knew queers existed. I never wanted to work with one (The Jet Set). The
alternatives to strict societal norms are further established when we encounter Don in bed
with Joy, and one of her male friends enters the room and sits on their bed. He refers to
Don as beautiful, and then casually reveals that he is Joys father. Dons confusion

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upon hearing this news mirrors the shock of the men at the ad agency upon hearing the
truth about Kurt, especially because of the homoerotic overtones to the exchange. Of
course, Don is also completely taken aback by the fact that a womans father seems to
feel perfectly comfortable conversing with her while she lies in bed with a man with
whom she has just had sex. Therefore, the scene emphasizes the idea of different realities,
areas that exist beyond the periphery of the conservatively ordered worlds of Madison
Avenue and the American suburb. In other words, here, California and Europe function
as spaces where the social order can be subverted without consequence.
The episode that takes place immediately after The Jet Set is The Mountain
King, which was referenced here earlier in regard to the rape of Joan Holloway, Sterling
Coopers office manager. The Mountain King also features Dons trip to visit Anna
Draper, the wife of the real Don Draper, who also lives in California. So, when Don
visits Anna at her airy, bright, beachside home, he is actually not Don at all, but Dick
Whitman, the person he was before he deserted the army during the Korean War. As
usual, Annas significance is revealed through flashbacks, thereby emphasizing the
disorienting nature of time and temporality as recurring themes throughout the series.
Through these flashbacks we witness Don desperately trying to convince her that there
has been a mix-up and he has not stolen her dead husbands identity.
As the episode progresses, it becomes clear that Don is completely different when
he is in Annas care. He relinquishes his brooding, mysterious demeanor and becomes
boyish and almost goofy. He communes with the neighbors over hot-rod cars, fixes
Annas broken chair (in stark contrast to his refusal to fix Bettys broken chair in A
Night to Remember), and even admits to her that he screwed everything up with

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regard to Betty and his children. In short, he becomes a much more real human being
he is aware of his flaws and willing to confront them in ways he has never done at home
in the suburbs. In fact, we even witness Don, in flashback again, on Christmas Eve with
Anna, boyishly and nervously describing the new love of his life, Betty. The scene
inspires a wave of sympathy for Don, who we finally see was once completely enamored
with his wife. Anna, while reading Dons tarot cards declares The only thing keeping
you from being happy is the belief that you are alone (The Mountain King). As the
episode ends, Don is seen slowly walking into the ocean as lines from the song The Cup
of Loneliness begin to play over the scene: I see Christian pilgrims/So redeemed from
sin/Called out of darkness/A new life to begin (Jones). So we see that, where Dons
experiences with the bohemians of The Jet Set allowed him to commune with joy
and freedom from conformity, his experiences in The Mountain King allow him to
experience redemption. Indeed, Anna is the one person who not only knows the truth
about Don, but has also forgiven him for all of his misdeeds. Through her tarot reading,
she performs a ritual that offers him hope for the future. So, we can read Dons trip to
California as a joyful, redemptive journey that allows him to commune with himself in
ways that he is unable to while confined in the constricting spaces of his home and his
work.
Author Keith Wilhite also addresses the totalizing nature of the suburbs as a
creator of meaning in Contested Terrain. Indeed, it would seem that the suburbs
fractal expansion has displaced the natural landscape, and along with it, the possibility of
a pastoral reading (321). Clearly, the suburbs of Mad Men also resist a pastoral
reading; in order to engage in the creation of the pastoral, the joyful, the redemptive, the

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narrative must move outside the highly contested terrain of the suburban landscape, as
well as beyond the anonymity that Don enjoys in the city. The notion of the pastoral is
reflected in the episode when Don pulls Frank OHaras Meditations in an Emergency
from Annas shelf and asks her if she enjoyed it. The title poem of the book addresses,
and seems to reject, the idea of intermediate spaces as areas of possibility:
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor
with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One
need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one
wishesI cant even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know theres a
subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not
totally regret life. (38)
So here it would seem that Don rejects the notion of the pastoral, and instead embraces
the mass production and consumption synonymous with city life. However, when he
asks Anna how she felt about it she replies, It made me worry about you (The
Mountain King). Anna, who seems to have a much more acute awareness of the truth
about Don than even he has, seems to know that Don does indeed need to leave the
confines of New York in order to save himself. The urban and suburban have replaced
the natural, and Don therefore is unable to be his natural self within that space. For
Don, California functions as a space that subverts the traditional social order and thereby
allows him the freedom to rediscover the self.
If California serves as a space for Don to discover his true self, then Europe, or
more specifically, Rome, functions as a space for Don and Betty to exist as something
that we have never seen: a loving, happily married couple. In the episode entitled

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Souvenir, which takes place in season three of the series, after Don has returned from
California, and at a time when Don and Bettys marriage remains rocky at best, Betty
decides at the last minute to accompany Don on a business trip to Rome. Immediately
preceding her decision to join him, Betty is unfaithful to Don; she kisses Henry Francis,
the man for whom she will eventually leave Don, outside of a town council meeting.
However, once they arrive in Rome, Don and Betty are transformed into the picture of
marital bliss. Interestingly, their admiration of each other seems dependent on the ability
to perceive each other through the perspectives of others. Don seems to relish in the
attention that Betty receives from numerous Italian men, and Betty seems impressed by
Conrad Hiltons appreciation for Don. The outside perspective that is emphasized here
again illuminates the power of the space outside of their life in Ossining. Once they are
able to see each other through the eyes of another, the dynamic of their relationship
completely changes.
Bettys escape to Rome is further highlighted by the fact that she was fully
immersed in a community projectsaving the town reservoirbefore she went on the
trip. She was performing the role of the concerned domestic housewifeguarding the
protected space of her community from ruin. The difference between the Betty at home
and the Betty in Rome is immense. Betty speaks fluent Italian, a fact that immediately
distances her from her usual role as housewife. Her appearance is markedly different as
well. She visits the hair salon and her usual girlish bob is transformed into a high,
elegant up-do. The brightly colored, new-look feminine dresses that she usually wears
are also conspicuously absent; she wears a sleek, black cocktail dress instead. Don and
Betty even venture as far as to actually pretend that they do not know each other when

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Don arrives at the hotel restaurant, effectively discarding their highly domesticated
identities of husband and wife. The entire trip is a whirlwind of admiration, desire, and
eventually lust, as they engage in passionate sex in their hotel room overlooking the
ancient city. The tension between old and new is very clearly emphasized here. Bettys
fight to save a town reservoir in the middle of a newly constructed, inorganic, planned
community seems petty and frivolous in comparison to the beautiful, sprawling city of
Rome that is visible from Don and Bettys hotel room window. The city of Rome
obviously exists as a space in stark contrast to the suburbs outside of New York City, and
the distinction between high culture and mass culture are decidedly obvious here.
Upon the return home to their picturesque house in the suburbs, Don and Betty
are immediately bombarded with the mundane details of their actual lives. The nanny
informs Betty that her children have been fighting, and Don quickly retreats into his usual
silent complacence, excusing himself as Betty has to deal with disciplining the children.
Later, Bettys friend and neighbor Francine gives her more disappointing news; she
thinks they lost their battle to save the reservoir. At the end of the episode, Betty erupts
in despair when Don asks her what is wrong, questioning him: What do you think is
wrong? (Souvenir). She then shouts that she hates her friends, the town, and her life.
Don, attempting to cheer her up, gives her a souvenira bracelet charm from the hotel
gift shop. Betty sadly replies, Now Ill have something to look at when I tell people
about the time we went to Rome(Souvenir). Here, the similarities between April
Wheeler and Betty Draper are vividly obvious. Betty and April both wish to exist in a
space where their lives consist of more than children, junior leagues, and community
theater productions. They want to escape to a place where their educations and talents

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can be put to use, where they can feel fulfilled. For Don Draper and Frank Wheeler,
escape is necessary but temporarythey are able to seek, and find fulfillment, in the
spaces outside of their suburban homes. They have the ability to seek satisfaction in their
professional lives, and they both seek mistresses to provide what their wives, due to their
perpetual unhappiness, cannot. For April and Betty, however, escape is the only means
to find happiness. Indeed, even when they do engage in infidelity, it only exacerbates
their misery. In fact, Betty and April are both incredulous as to how Frank and Don
could possibly be blind to the fact that they are miserable in their suburban homes. When
April first discusses her plan to move with Frank, she says, I dont have to tell you what
is wrong, just as Betty questions What do you think is wrong? In order for Betty and
April to remedy what is wrong, they must be able to carve out an existence outside of the
contained space of the suburbs where they are forced to perform roles that leave them
fundamentally unfulfilled.

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CONCLUSION
While the similarities between the Drapers and the Wheelers are clearly
pronounced, the multiple temporalities and serial nature of Mad Mens narrative structure
create an obvious distinction between the two narratives overall. While Revolutionary
Road is engaged with and interpreted as a product of the postwar time frame in which it
was produced, Mad Men is resistant to closure and, therefore, its meaning continues to
shift. In addition, Mad Mens complex and troubled relationship to nostalgia, the culture
industry, and the past it is attempting to portray continues to disrupt and complicate the
messages it is attempting to convey. In fact, one of Mad Mens most interesting
confrontations of nostalgia occurred in the season finale of its most recent season. Don,
who seems increasingly unstable, and appears to finally be suffering the effects of
tobacco and alcohol addiction, gives a stunningly beautiful presentation to the Hershey
chocolate company in which he draws, once again, on childhood memories and false
nostalgia. In a scene that deliberately draws on the nostalgia presentation from The
Wheel, Don once again gives a mesmerizing performance, describing how wonderful
and loved he felt as a child when his father would buy him a Hershey bar. The clients are
visibly impressed, but Don suddenly reverses course and reveals that everything he just
said was a lie. He did not have a father; he grew up in a whorehouse, and the only time
he received a Hershey bar was after he had stolen money from one of the clients, and was
therefore subsequently rewarded with the chocolate. It is a jarring departure from the lies
he has created over all the episodes before it, and it ultimately results in a meeting where

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he is basically fired. (He is officially suspended indefinitely.) The episode ends with
Don showing his children the actual house where he spent his childhood. So it appears
that this episode ultimately represents yet another attempt to finally deconstruct the very
nostalgia that it engenders. It seems that here, the writers and producers are challenging
the viewers to finally address our own collective history honestly.
Still, it seems that despite all of our attempts to expose and interrogate the
oppression, repression, and anxiety that infected the era of the 1950s and early 60s, the
romanticization of the time period persists in American culture. Films such as
Pleasantville, Far From Heaven, and even the film version of Revolutionary Road seem
to display a desire to re-visit and disrupt romantic notions of the era; yet ultimately
nostalgia seems to override those disruptions. A recent poll conducted by the magazine
The Economist asked readers to determine to which decade of the twentieth century they
would most like to return. The unequivocal winner was the 1950s, with the 1960s
coming in second. So the question remains, why do we remain fixated on an era that was
so wrought with repression, disparity, and isolationism? Stephanie Coontz would argue
that it is not the conservatism and isolation that we crave, but rather the economic
prosperity, job security, and social safety nets. Perhaps even more interestingly, she
claims that groups who were oppressed during the time period, such as women, African
Americans, and other minority groups, miss having something concrete to push against
a clear establishment to resist, rather than the more nebulous, institutionalized forms of
oppression that exist today. Indeed, specifically with regard to advertising, I think we
somehow cannot resist the appeal of the nave innocence that allowed us to embrace
products without worrying about ill health, the environment, or other consequences.

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Still, however, ultimately, our fixation on the postwar era does seem to be borne
out of an inability to reconcile our past. For one, the fact that we insist on clinging onto
whitewashed, sanitized versions of our often dark and ugly past seems to have indeed
become a pathological impulse in the collective American imagination. The suburbs
have become a perfect image for the wholesome America from which we wish we had
come. In a way it would seem that nostalgia for the postwar era and the idyllic suburban
lifestyle has become symbolic of what the suburbs themselves once were. In other
words, by evoking a false nostalgia for the era, we are able to enforce our own culture of
containment, our own constructed space in which the harsh realities of the externalthe
racism, sexism, and myriad other forms of oppression that plagued the time periodcan
be kept at bay. Here again our pathological failure becomes obvious. If we seem to wish
to ignore the issues that plagued the past, we will never be able to functionally address
the problems of today. Indeed, many of the issues that I have discussed here continue to
be problematic in contemporary society. It seems that in our post-9/11 culture, we have
increasingly returned to a society that demands surveillance and conformity, at hitherto
unheard of levels, and our paranoia regarding terrorism certainly mirrors the paranoia of
the Cold-War era. Additionally, issues that seemed to have been resolved during the
Feminist and Civil Rights movements that were borne out of a resistance to the repression
and oppression of the postwar era have suddenly become headlines again, as laws dealing
with womens reproductive rights and even the Voting Rights Act have steadily lost
power. So perhaps our fixation on the time period is not completely pathological.
Perhaps it is as paradoxical and reproducible as the texts discussed here would have us

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believe. We look back in order to distance ourselves from what we were, while at the
same time clinging onto a false nostalgia for what never really was there to begin with.

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